Our friends from Uptown and Queens know the value to Right of Assembly... just ask Rosa Parks and her fire-hosed friends...
cut to 2008, where Reverend Al Sharpton joins the heavily policed and harassed NEW YORK CITY CRITICAL MASS...
A statement of Unity from diverse people who share a passion / recognize the necessity for the Right of Assembly!
---NOTE--- Sean Bell was an unarmed young man shot 50 times by the NYPD on his wedding night. Sadly this is not a one-off horror, 50 bullets to your brain does the same as one bullet. ( or 41 shots, or a deadly choke hold, or... you get the picture )
--QUESTION-- Don't our tax dollars have higher purposes than paying undereducated gun wielding nightmares to harass cyclists and shoot up young men's bachelor parties...?
---Music--- "We own the Streets" - by Team Spider a song inspired by the cyclists of NYC battling against permit schemes introduced by the NYPD. Fascist schemes that would allow Police to arrest any 7 cyclists riding together, the clever (law writing??) cops also slipped into the legislation a clause allowing them to arrest w/out cause any 30 people gathering in a park.
As we Cyclists entered the (police station???) hearings to argue these schemes, Sean Bell's family was protesting across the street in front of City Hall, mere days after he was shot..
it dawned on me that Sean Bell's friends, family, and supporters had no idea that laws were being argued and introduced right across the street, at that exact same moment, that would ultimately be used to arrest them, radicalize the turnout, and legally crush dissent---
now,,, thanks to some reaching out, both groups are working together... AND RIDING BIKES ! werd.
photos by heather J, Video by Xris
