On March 8th, International Women’s Day, New Yorkers mobilized in Union Square to raise the struggle of our sisters in Palestine and in solidarity with all Palestinian people resisting the ongoing genocide by the zionist entity and U.S. imperialism. While the action was successful and we flooded the streets in defiance of the riot cops mobilized against us, the NYPD reacted more aggressively than we have seen thus far — arresting over 30 people in Manhattan over a 5 hour period.
Minutes after the action started, a zionist provocateur entered the crowd cheering for Israel as protesters chanted about Palestinian children being killed. When confronted, he assaulted a WOL organizer by pushing her in the chest. While protesters attempted to eject him from the crowd, NYPD formed a wall to protect him and ignored that he physically assaulted a woman. The same cops threatened to arrest the same woman for initially using a mic to deliver a speech from Palestinian women in Gaza. Despite NYPD threats to arrest us for using a speaker, we read the statement from the women in Gaza using the people’s mic, reverberating the words of our sisters through the streets of Manhattan.
As we made our way south from Union Square, the NYPD’s James McCarthy and Timothy Beaudette were laser focused on preventing us from taking the streets, even though the march was too large to fit on the sidewalk. As we have seen time and time again, the people are fully capable of outsmarting, outrunning, and outmaneuvering the most well-funded police force in the world.
We were fully on the street by the time we crossed Cooper Union. At that time, scattered arrests had occurred, and the Strategic Response Group’s Biker Squad started cutting into our lines in an attempt to break us apart. This did not have the intended effect, as we are not afraid of a large march being split into several smaller marches.
The action then split into two: one section stormed the Oculus despite the Strategic Response Group’s best attempts to lock the doors. The other section winded its way through Manhattan before both linking up at Zuccotti Park, where protestors noticed Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry and began chanting at him until he retreated to an unmarked police vehicle.
By the time we closed out, roughly 30 people were arrested. Once again, women were beaten unconscious by the NYPD, grabbed by their collar and thrown to the pavement, and we have seen reports of people being beaten inside a police vehicle. Pedestrian bikers who were not part of the protest were ripped off their bicycles by Chief James McCarthy and thrown to the floor.
Once the rally dispersed and protestors went to jail support, cops once again escalated and engaged in a cop riot at 1 Police Plaza. Several people who were there to support the arrestees were themselves arrested for the crime of standing on the sidewalk or crossing the street in a crosswalk.
Never forget that on International Women’s Day in New York City, the New York Police Department beat women until they were unconscious, the week that the ACLU settlement, meant specifically to restrict the police from engaging in the kinds of actions they use at many of our rallies, was intended to go into effect.
We call on all supporters of Palestine to REFUSE to normalize with the forces of repression in all its forms: REFUSE photo-ops during Ramadan with the Mayor’s Office, rip up your White House Iftar invitation, make a commitment to refuse getting permits for protests and other public demonstrations. The struggle to Free Palestine requires unity in non-normalization with the entities financing and sponsoring our people’s genocide. Do anything and everything you can to build the capacity of our movement to sustain itself and survive this moment.