Another George Floyd Protest – 6.4.20
Last night I was in my apartment when I heard people yelling outside. It sounded like the cheers people in my neighborhood do when at 7pm every day to thank health care workers but that had already happened. I realized it was 8pm and the curfew had just gone into effect so I assumed people were cheering to protest the curfew. But then the sound got louder and people started chanting “Black lives matter! Black lives matter!” I looked outside and there was a huge protest outside of my house so I grabbed my camera and a mask and I ran outside.
I walked a few blocks away from my apartment so people don’t know exactly where I live since it would be ideal if the right wing lunatics who attack me every day on Twitter knew where I lived. Everyone was taking a knee and it was a pretty incredible thing to see in my neighborhood on the southside of Williamsburg Brooklyn. Despite Williamsburgs reputation of being a hipster hotbed (it hasn’t been in a decade), my neighborhood is mostly Dominican and Hasidic families.
I hurt my foot during the protests on Monday and I was in pretty bad shape. I was just gonna stand in the corner but I ran into a friend of mine so I walked with her for a few blocks. Eventually I had to stop but not before running into two other friends including my artist friend who goes by The Sucklord (more on that in a minute). After the protest had passed I limped back to my apartment before realizing I had left my wallet and keys inside. Fortunately one of my neighbors let me in because it would not have been an ideal time to get arrested for breaking curfew.
Now, there aren’t a ton of photos here and nothing interesting happened while I was with the protest so I wasn’t even going to publish these as a post on my site. I posted some of my favorites on Twitter and I thought that was going to be it. Unfortunately my buddy Sucklord got attacked by the police later that night so I am doing this post to highlight another example of police brutality even if I didn’t get shots of it. Here’s the story, paraphrased from both his Instagram story and from my conversation with him as well as what I have read about the specific protest on Twitter.
There was a rally earlier at McCarren Park which is on the border of Williamsburg and Greenpoint Brooklyn. As the rally ended a spontaneous march broke out with people just winding through Williamsburg. Because it was unplanned there was no specific leadership but the protest was completely peaceful. When I marched with them for a few blocks I didn’t see any laws being broken but the curfew. The police were following them and directing traffic ahead of them but had no other altercation. At some point the police stopped the protest and wouldn’t let anyone go any farther. Sucklord went to the front of the line because the idea with these protests is to put white people in front to protect the black protesters. Since the march was leaderless and Sucklord was at the front he tried to negotiate with the cops but they wouldn’t listen to him and started yelling at him so he backed up. Eventually they were at a standstill and the protesters turned around and started leaving. That’s when the cops attacked.
They started just hitting people with clubs, grabbing them and arresting them. Sucklord was beaten fairly badly and tried to escape by crawling onto a car. Several cops grabbed him and pulled him off directly onto his head. It knocked him out and he laid on the concrete bleeding as they continued to hit him. Fortunately one of the other cops stopped them and protected him. He said the cop seemed to have genuine concern for his safety and was the one that took him to the hospital. Of course the same cop arrested him and Sucklord doesn’t know what he was charged with. Fortunately other activists bailed him out and drove him home and he is recovering at home and is going to be fine.
But the fact of the matter is that once again the NYPD has attacked a peaceful protest that is protesting the exact brutality that they are responding with. The police officers who do this shit need to be held accountable, and not just fired, but prosecuted. And I don’t think these protests are going to end until something is done to hold them accountable, not just for these incidents but systematically. Laws need to change.
Maybe for once they will change. This is going to sound awful but it takes white people like Sucklord, and the 75 year old man that was attacked last night in Buffalo to get hurt by police for everyone to wake up to this brutality. A lot of people see cops killing black people and they think “oh well, I am sure he deserved it somehow” or “well if he hadn’t resisted…” but when they see middle class white people on TV every night getting attacked for non violent civil disobedience, maybe people will realize that this is the shit that black people have been going through since reconstruction. Maybe the police aren’t the good guys after all. Maybe something will change and we will finally make some steps to fix this broken, racist judicial system. Black lives matter.
PS. If you have been a victim of NYPD violence or witnessed it, here is a good breakdown of what to do to report it.
