Friday. 5:30 p.m. I walk 15 minutes to Barclays Center. The warm spring air feels charged.
Brooklyn groups have called for a 6 p.m. action to mark the death of George Floyd, a black man who died Monday when a white Minneapolis cop, Derek Chauvin, kept his knee pressed into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, during the final three of which Floyd was non-responsive. A bystander recorded the act.
Protests began Tuesday in Minneapolis. Thursday night, after local prosecutors declined to charge Chauvin, participants burned the city’s Third Precinct police station and local businesses in turmoil that lasted through the night. Around 5 a.m., while doing a live shot on the street, a CNN reporter and crew were arrested; tape shows all three cooperating with all police requests. (They were released in an hour, after CNN’s chief called the Minnesota governor.) Protests spread to New York, Denver, Phoenix, Columbus, and Louisville, where in March police shot and killed a woman named Breonna Taylor in her home, which police mistakenly invaded though they had their suspect in custody.
On Friday afternoon Chauvin is arrested. Minneapolis prosecutors charge him with third-degree murder, which requires no intent or decision to kill, as well as second-degree manslaughter. Floyd’s relatives express disappointment that no first-degree murder charge will be brought. The Minneapolis mayor institutes an 8 p.m. curfew; few expect it to stop protests.
A bit after 5 p.m. The Girlfriend’s child, in Manhattan to see a friend, texts to say they’ve seen black-clad marchers heading from Foley Square over the Brooklyn Bridge. I mask up, head out.
Maybe I’m jumpy, but I’m more than a half-mile from Barclays and the atmosphere feels pregnant. Some of it’s the weather: 80 degrees, with a late-spring coolness likely to linger for only another few nights; it’s brought out couples, old folks, bicyclists, drivers with windows down, music booming: not quite a normal May Friday night but far more neighborhood traffic than I’ve seen in 11 weeks of quarantine.
As I walk west on Fulton, then Hanson, I start to see protestors, almost all clad in black jeans, black or white T-shirts, boots, black masks. More than half are white; almost all are in their 20s and 30s, striding in twos and threes and fours. The Foley Square marchers have apparently arrived; chants are audible from five blocks away.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has barred groups of more than 10 during quarantine; cops have broken up funerals, among other gatherings. But as I turn south on Fort Greene Place I see about 1,000 people on the plaza in front of the arena. Virtually everyone is masked, but there’s no way to maintain physical distancing.
I’ve participated in at least eight marches and protests since November 2016. The largest was the January 2017 women’s march, when two hours saw me move about four midtown Manhattan blocks; the massive throng felt familial, hopeful, almost joyous: OK, a dangerous man won the White House, but look at all of us! Last fall’s climate strike, which saw Greta Thunberg speak at Battery Park, was buoyed by tens of thousands of children; again, hope prevailed. Others have been smaller, ranging from a few thousand to a few dozen, filled with seniors and the middle-aged, laden with a growing sense of discouragement: My god, what is happening to this country.
Friday night feels different. The median age is perhaps 28; no doubt fear of Covid-19 is keeping away families, children, seniors. I walk through the plaza, take a few pictures. Hundreds of New York Police Department officers have lined two-thirds of the right triangle formed by Atlantic, Flatbush, and Sixth avenues. (The arena cuts off the final third.) White Correctional Department buses are parked along Atlantic and Flatbush, ready to transport arrestees. To the extent one can tell through the masks, everyone — protestor and cop alike — looks stern, tense.
At the protest’s center are more people of color, many, I assume, Black Lives Matter activists. Chants and claps roll one to the next, echoing across the plaza, which continues to fill: “What do we want?” “Justice!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” “Black lives matter! Black lives matter!” “Say his name: George Floyd!” “No justice, no peace, no more racist-ass police!”
I roam the perimeter. A young black woman, stomping to the beat of each chant, holds above her head a mirror before a line of police, its lipstick spelling out “Look at yourselves!” Onlookers across each avenue point cameras; more and more young people stream toward the plaza, many holding signs: "End white supremacy." "Stop killing black people." "Jail killer cops now." "Justice for Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade." (The last is a black transgender man shot by the Tallahassee, Fla., Police Department.)
I don’t tarry. Despite the masks, I’m not comfortable amid so many people shouting in the midst of a pandemic. I don’t sense imminent mayhem, but it does feel like a space of intense pressure. People are here to express outrage. It feels connected to the pandemic, which in this city has been mishandled from the mayor’s office to the governor’s mansion to the White House. It’s directly about police misdeeds: How many more must die? And it’s directly about white supremacy, a movement now led by a president who expresses sympathy for white nationalists in Charlottesville, white quarantine protestors in Lansing, calls Minneapolis protestors “THUGS!” It might take only a few matches to set this night alight.
Plus I have an errand: I’m picking up Champagne for me and The Girlfriend, the sale of whose Southern California house closed this afternoon. As I walk southeast on Atlantic, dozens of more young people stride past me, some with signs, almost all in black.
I buy booze, walk home. The Girlfriend and I cook chicken Vesuvio, make a salad, drink Champagne. The Girlfriend reviews what would likely have happened Before CoronaWorld, which parallels exactly what transpired: list her house; bids arrive over the asking price; brief negotiation; a few hassles; sale concludes. But every element felt fraught with risk. And now that it’s over, she says, she doesn't exactly feel positive: “It’s hard to feel good about anything in CoronaWorld.”
Around 9:30 p.m. we walk the neighborhood. Again, the air feels tense, expectant. We see piles of trash in the street. What’s with the garbage? The Girlfriend asks; you never see that in this neighborhood. We walk north to Willoughby, turn east, away from Fort Greene Park.
Let’s not go into Bed-Stuy, The Girlfriend says; this doesn’t feel like a good night for that. We turn south on Hall Street; at Lafayette we encounter dozens of cops, in several different types of uniforms, many with batons in hand. They look different from the stoic faces of 6 p.m. — tenser, readier for action. We hear chants, follow a small group of marchers walking south on Washington; they’re walking fast, can’t be more than 100 or so. When they turn east on Fulton, we turn west toward home, watch a half-dozen police cars stream south. “They’re flanking the marchers,” I say.
From our apartment we hear sirens non-stop for more than an hour — the stentorian police version, not the plaintive ambulance wail. The Girlfriend asks me to check the news; I see a tweet from Mayor De Blasio: “We have a long night ahead of us in Brooklyn. Our sole focus is deescalating this situation and getting people home safe. There will be a full review of what happened tonight. We don’t ever want to see another night like this.”
From experience, I know we’ll get a better picture of what happened in the morning than the first-draft misinformation that will fill my social media feeds tonight. We go to bed.
Garbage trucks wake me at 6, just like a normal Saturday. I read the news. Their version: someone at Barclays around 8 p.m. threw water bottles at cops, who responded with pepper spray, baton charges, announcements to disburse. People threw more stuff; police grew more aggressive. My assembly member and state senator were pepper sprayed. Protestors burned an empty police van at Fort Greene Park, damaged more police vehicles at the 88th Precinct headquarters. Protests raged long into the night.
I go for a walk. On a construction fence across the street new graffiti greets me: “Fuck The Police.” I walk toward Fort Greene Park along Dekalb: a trail of broken eggs, trash, fallen signs. At the park, market vendors are setting up tents, just like a regular Saturday. But graffiti are everywhere: "Fuck 12." "FTP." "Fuck The Police." On a small American flag planted in grass, written in black: "Black Lives Matter." On the sidewalk at the park entrance near DeKalb and South Portland, where the police van was burned, someone has gathered piles of ash to create a message, framed by fire-charred helmets, traffic cone, tree branch.
I walk east to Classon, to the 88th Precinct building. Someone falsely reported last night that it had been overrun; in the daylight its handsome bricks look untouched. But parked on Dekalb a police car and van are destroyed: windshields and windows smashed, mirrors snapped, graffiti sprayed.
An African-American man, 40s, bald, bandana, snaps pictures from a camera strapped around his neck. We chat.
“I live a block from here; I heard it all night,” he says. “I knew it was coming. I heard around 3 o’clock they closed the Target near Barclays, and I knew it was going to be bad.
“Something about this feels different,” he says. “Not that this shit is different. [Gestures to broken police car] This shit’s the same — been going on since ’65, maybe earlier. What feels different is what's coming next. This feels like a tipping point.”
Why?
“It’s everything. It’s the years of built-up pressure. It’s the pandemic. It’s the nakedly authoritarian government in Washington, D.C. Shit feels out of control. I honestly don’t know what’s coming next. But I think it's going to be big. And I know people are going to be back out tonight.”
We tell each other to stay safe. I turn on Classon, take a picture of another graffiti-sprayed police van.
A uniformed African-American officer, late 20s, shaved head, unmasked, coffee cup in hand, asks, “Enjoying the art work?”
“Crazy,” I say. “You seen anything like this in your time on the force?”
“Oh, I’m brand new,” he says. “Just started this year. Great timing. Covid. Now this.”
“Were you working last night?”
“Until 3 a.m." He pauses. "You know, that Minneapolis cop was wrong. Maybe criminal. I'm glad he got fired. But last night I got all kinds of shit thrown at me: rocks, eggs, garbage. Garbage cans.” He gestures across the street, to a brick 15-floor Lafayette Houses public housing building. “Some of it was coming from up there. Hey, you know, you can say anything you want to me. Whatever. That’s your right. That’s what it means to be American. And I know: It’s not personal. You’re just talking to the uniform; you don’t know me. But when you’re doing stuff like this … [Gestures to the van] … Now we’ve got one less RMP on the road.”
“RMP?”
“Radio motor patrol — it just means a cop car. But if we’re down an RMP, and we get a call — let’s say it’s an active shooter. And this precinct is down four RMPs. That’s a dozen, 14 fewer cops who can respond right away. That slows us down. And sometimes speed makes all the difference.”
Stay safe, we tell each other. I walk home in the bright morning of another gorgeous spring day.
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