Protestors and NYPD during 'Flood Wall Street' (photo: Azi Paybarah)
The de Blasio administration's handling of the People's Climate March and Flood Wall Street protests has been widely praised by many leading critics of the NYPD.
On Sunday, NYCLU head Donna Lieberman tweeted that the non-confrontational approach taken by Bratton's forces was "#change we can believe in." And writing in Gotham Gazette Tuesday, Brooklyn College professor Alex Vitale suggests that the improved relations between the NYPD and protesters at both Sunday and Monday's events meant that "the First Amendment scored a major victory this week."
But in the spirit of that same amendment, I shall dissent.
Consider the intended locations of both events. Organizers of the People's Climate March sought to make their statement in Times Square, not on the streets surrounding it. And as the name alone indicates, "Flood Wall Street" was neither aimed at lower Broadway, nor the entire financial district.
Forcefully manned NYPD barricades ensured that no demonstrators would gain access to either iconic location during this week's protests.
While some may be tempted to cue up a certain Rolling Stones song, others may wonder about the precedents now set. The next time protest organizers seek access to Times Square, city officials can point to the ill-defined Climate March route as an established alternative.
Vitale suggests that the NYPD may seek for it to be an "apolitical" place, but Times Square does remain public space. At the height of the Occupy Wall Street movement in October of 2011, police allowed a march route from Washington Square to the edge of Times Square, knowing that activists would seek confrontation there.
While it was indeed surprising that Monday's Occupy-style event led to the shutdown of lower Broadway, most observers paid little attention to the fact that Wall Street itself was barricaded throughout the day. If the NYPD allowed a lunch-hour sit-in on Wall Street, that likely would have been less disruptive to business as usual in the area than letting activists control a major artery throughout the entire afternoon.
Both protests thus illustrated the NYPD's growing insistence on insulating the city's most "sacred" spaces from political demonstrations. Is this really a victory for the 1st amendment?
It's also a mistake to see these two events as clearly establishing a definite pattern. After all, as veteran Occupy organizer Stefan Fink told Al Jazeera, they occurred precisely as the "eyes of the world" were on New York City.
Mayor de Blasio was one of the many leading political figures who took part in the Climate March, and he was also slated to address the U.N. climate summit the following day. A hostile approach to a climate change demonstration was clearly not in his best interest.
The mayor's noble proclamations about the 1st amendment also need to be read against the backdrop of his own arrest in the effort to save Long Island College Hospital last year. Many now see that as simply a campaign stunt, but it also makes it hard for the mayor to object to direct action.
Finally, given his lack of leadership on other ongoing policing controversies, a gentler approach to protest also may benefit the mayor politically, since it may calm activists' ire.
Thus, while this week's events indeed suggest a "change" in the climate of protest, it's wiser to reserve judgment until the next large demonstrations take shape—on whatever street they may arise.
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Theodore Hamm (@HammerDaily) is chair of journalism and new media studies at St. Joseph's College in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.
A scene from Monday's Flood Wall Street protest (photo: Azi Paybarah)
For over a decade the NYCLU and others have criticized the NYPD for the way it handles demonstrations. The NYPD's practices have been out of step with international human rights standards and widely accepted best practices. In too many cases the department has relied on a strategy of micro-management backed up by excessive force and in the worst cases has preemptively disrupted protests before they even start, resulting in a cost of tens of millions in legal settlements and unnecessary overtime. The policing of Sunday's People's Climate March and Monday's Flood Wall Street action showed encouraging signs of a break in that approach as police took a less restrictive and more flexible and tolerant posture, reducing the use of barricades and allowing protestors to peacefully occupy lower Broadway for much of Monday.
In 2003, I coauthored a report with the NYCLU following the NYPD's botched handling of the 2003 anti-Iraq War demonstration on Manhattan's East Side. Hundreds of thousands of peaceful protestors were denied the right to protest because of denials of permits, restrictions on access to the demonstration area, and an oppressive overuse of metal barricades to pen in demonstrators.
During the Republican National Convention in 2004, the NYPD relaxed some of its worst practices in terms of access and penning following federal litigation, but continued to needlessly over-police most demonstrations. Another report I co-authored with the NYCLU documented that in a number of instances the NYPD relied on preemptive tactics, including the surveillance of demonstrators, alarmist statements about protestors made to the media, and the outright unlawful arrest of almost 2,000 people before they had even begun demonstrating, much less broken the law.
During the Occupy protests in 2011, the NYPD frequently employed excessive force against demonstrators. People who marched in the street were immediately subjected to pepper spray, punches, mass arrest, and even being dragged by the hair. Even those on the sidewalk or public plazas were subjected to constant harassment and arrest for infractions like using chalk on the sidewalk or speaking into a megaphone.
In several papers I have outlined how these tactics represent a shift away from the widely practiced "negotiated management" style of policing that is flexible and tolerant in an effort to avoid escalations of conflict and violence to the twin strategies of Command and Control and the Miami Model. The former, based in large part on the Broken Windows theory and developed early in the Giuliani administration, attempts to control demonstrators through massive police deployments, extensive use of metal barricades to control people's access to demonstrations and their movement within them, tight limits on the issuing of permits--often based on political calculations, and a zero tolerance outlook towards even minor violations of permits or the law.
The Miami Model is even more restrictive. For demonstrators who are perceived to be a threat to public order, the police regularly engage in preemptive arrests, disruptive surveillance practices, the deployment of militarized riot control techniques and even the use of agents provocateur. This model, developed in Miami by former NYPD chief John Timmony, was a response to the disruptive protest at the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999. In 2003 the Miami Police used military grade riot control weapons on peaceful demonstrators, denied thousands of union members access to the protest area, and denigrated protestors in the media prior to the demonstrations.
On Sunday, there was the possibility of a repeat of 2003. March organizers had been denied a permit to proceed through Times Square (so the NYPD could maintain its apolitical character?) and couldn't get a commitment about reduced use of pens and ease of access to the staging area. In the end, the police did in fact dial back many of its micromanagement strategies, though not completely. Access to the assembly areas was mostly pretty good with only some people being told to walk north to get to Central Park West. Once there, there were protest pens—unlike other major cities around the world hosting demonstrations that day --but movement in, out, and between them, was possible in most cases. And, while parts of the route, especially near Times Square, were heavily barricaded, the bulk of 6th Ave was not. This was a major departure from past demonstrations and was greatly welcomed by demonstrators who were able to interact with passersby, grab something to eat, or go to the bathroom with relative ease.
The real changes, however, were on Monday. Organizers of the Flood Wall Street action had pledged to disrupt business as usual in lower Manhattan through mass civil disobedience and direct action. A couple of thousand people showed up and at around 11:30 a.m. many sat down next the bull sculpture in the middle of Broadway just above Bowling Green. They were allowed to occupy that space for much of the afternoon. The police made no effort to arrest them, disperse them, or even to isolate them from onlookers. This was a major departure from past practice. Similar efforts in recent years have been met with widespread use of force to push demonstrators onto sidewalks along with often random arrests to intimidate others.
By around 3:30 PM many of those sitting in dispersed, but several hundred marched north towards Wall Street. Police made little to no effort to contain them until demonstrators attempted to breach the barriers blocking access to Wall Street. At that point a few people were subjected to pepper spray and punches as they wrestled with police over the barricades there--a not unreasonable use of force given the circumstances.
Even after that violent confrontation, police allowed people to occupy Broadway for another 3 hours before finally warning, then arresting the remaining 100 protestors in a calm, deliberate, and methodical manner.
While some may criticize the mayor for tying the NYPD's hands, in fact this is an example of the kind of more tolerant and flexible policing the city needs as an antidote to 20 years of aggressive zero tolerance approaches. The First Amendment scored a major victory this week.
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Alex S. Vitale is associate professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics. He is senior policy adviser to hte Police Reform Organizing Project and serves on the New York State Advisory Committee to the US Civil Rights Commission. You can follow him on Twitter at @avitale.
The Bronx Beer Hall (photo: Brian Nobili)
The following entry is part of The Small Business Corner, a collaboration between Gotham Gazette and GoBizNYC:
Recently, GoBizNYC met with Bronxites Anthony Ramirez II, Paul Ramirez, and John Martin to discuss their experience starting up The Bronx Beer Hall. Located in the historic Arthur Avenue Retail Market, The Bronx Beer Hall was founded in February 2013 and has since become an indelible part of the community. Anthony and John are serial entrepreneurs — in 2006, they founded Mainland Media, a company that sells Bronx-themed merchandise designed by local artists.
The team's ongoing mission is to find success while promoting the Bronx and it has earned tremendous local support. In the early stages of starting their business, however, the three had a tough time identifying information about what was required of New York small business owners to satisfy government regulations. To its credit, the City does provide resources about business regulations through the NYC Business internet portal as well as the NYC Business Solutions and NYC Business Acceleration services. New Small Business Services Commissioner Maria Torres-Springer has outlined her vision for helping small business owners and budding entrepreneurs.
The Bronx Beer Hall founders discovered, though, that every business faces unique challenges and becoming a fully compliant owner and employer can be a process of trial and error. Their experience is informative of what many small business owners go through in attempting to realize their goals. The following are excerpts from our conversation.
Why a beer hall? Why the Bronx?
Beer halls are inherently communal spaces. There are about 130 beer halls across the five boroughs now, but just one in the Bronx when we opened. But this is not just a beer hall. It's not just a bar. It's a celebration of the community. Everything we sell is locally brewed within New York State, if not in the Bronx. And our food is sourced from within the market or within the neighborhood, so we're supportive of other local businesses as well.
What were the biggest challenges of starting up your business? How did you overcome these challenges?
It's not as easy as saying you're a business and that's it. It's not just shaking hands. You have to do your research. There are government regulations to comply with. There are taxes to pay. There is paperwork to file and legal entities to form.
When it came down to the beer hall itself, we had to learn all the little intricate things you never think about. We've all gone to bars. I know how to order a drink very well. But I didn't know anything about health codes, inspections, or liquor licenses. None of us had actually owned a bar before. I know for a fact that if we opened a bar again, we'd do things differently.
Did you have any guidance during this process?
We hired a lawyer who claimed he had experience in helping restaurants and bars open and had been doing this forever. Turns out we should've hired a different lawyer. He was very quick to make promises, saying: "I can get you this, easy!" or "Yeah, I'll get you a liquor license in two weeks!" No one can get a liquor license in two weeks. It's going to take several months. Don't tell me two weeks. If I plan on opening a bar in November, I now have to wait until February. You're paying for these kinds of things and there's just no way of knowing if you're working with someone who really knows what they're doing.
We've since learned that there are many things we could've easily done on our own without having to pay somebody else to do it. Lots of people try to take advantage of you because you don't know what you're doing. But in this day and age, often you can just go online and file a form. You don't need to pay somebody $400 to do it. We just didn't know it at the time.
What has been your experience in dealing with government regulations? What could the government do to better support businesses like yours?
At the beginning, we had no idea we had to pay our taxes quarterly, which was a problem. Reminder notifications definitely would've been nice. The only notifications we ever got were late ones saying: 'You didn't pay your sales tax. Now we're going to fine you and you have to pay your sales tax.' And we're like, 'Our company only has $1,000. I hope we still have a company after we pay the fine.' But the thing is, we were collecting the sales tax. We just didn't know when to pay it.
And it wasn't clear what we were required to do when we had staff. Now we know more, but at the time, we were writing out checks by hand. I remember, for the first two or three weeks, we weren't taking out enough taxes. Our staff was getting overpaid and we owed the government X amount of money.
Those were the early days. Those sorts of things were trial and error for us. But we got better at all of it. I know it's easy to say and hard to do, but if there was a "You're starting a restaurant or bar in New York City! This is what you need to be aware of" guide, that would've been very helpful.
Have you worked with the City's Department of Small Business Services (SBS) at all? They provide such a guide along with other resources.
When we were starting Mainland Media, we reached out to SBS, but it was too difficult for us to meet with them. So we ended up doing everything on our own, which is what we're used to doing. Honestly, I didn't even think to go back to SBS when we were starting up the beer hall more recently. It didn't even occur to us that those services were around.
Any final reflections on your experience of starting up The Bronx Beer Hall?
We've been active in the Bronx and in the community for awhile, so we had a lot of people we could reach out to for help. But if we didn't already have a strong support system and experience building a business with Mainland Media, we would've been lost. So, if you're someone with a great idea in the Bronx or New York without that kind of support system, I don't see how you would be able to cut it.
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Victor Wong is the Director of Business Outreach & GoBizNYC at the Partnership for New York City
To make or discuss a submission for The Small Business Corner:
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The Small Business Corner is a bi-weekly column featuring the opinions and perspectives of small business owners and advocates from the GoBizNYC network on the range of issues that concern the city's small businesses.
To all New York City small business owners and advocates: we hope this new platform, The Small Business Corner, will better enable you to engage in the local policy conversation and we look to you to support us in this endeavor by sharing your thoughts, experiences, and voices. To learn more about how you can be a part of GoBizNYC and participate in this effort, visit GoBizNYC.org.