Name: Peaceful NYC protesters' message to America: 'Looters have nothing to do with us'
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Peaceful NYC protesters' message to America: 'Looters have nothing to do with us'

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NorthJersey.comView CommentsNEW YORK — If you’ve been watching the news lately, then you might believe that all the people protesting police brutality in Atlanta and Cleveland and Reno and New York City aren’t really protesting at all. On television, on Facebook and Twitter, the people we see are mostly skinny young men smashing windows and stealing electronics from Verizon stores.If you’ve only been watching the protests from afar, you probably have never heard from people like Eloise Paterson and her friend Ramona Cordero. So please allow me to make the introduction. You may know Paterson’s brother-in-law David, the former governor of New York. Eloise and Cordero both work as attorneys in Harlem. Paterson’s teenage sons attend Collegiate School and The Calhoun School, and Cordero’s daughter attends The Chapin School, three of the most expensive, most rigorous private high schools in this country.&nbsp;And every time their children leave home, Paterson and Cordero worry a police officer might murder them.“I’m terrified if my son just goes out for a jog,” said Paterson, 54. “I hope people realize that this isn’t about the looting. The looters have nothing to do with us. We are out here because we want our children to be safe.”All day on Tuesday, protesters repeated different versions of this message. They marched all over Manhattan, all day long and into the evening. From police headquarters in Foley Square they marched north to Union Square, up to Park Avenue, Lexington Avenue and all the way to Gracie Mansion on 88th Street, 10 miles of zigs and zags intended to keep thousands of people marching together while leaving the police guessing about where they all might go next.Story continues after galleryThe speed of the march, and its convoluted path, also was designed to reduce opportunities for protesters and police officers to face off. For nine hours, the protesters and the police maintained this detente, with no windows broken, nor any bones.“We just want police to see black people as people,” said an organizer who gave his name as Jai. “We don’t want them to see a black person and get triggered into the fear response of fight or flight. We just want them to relax.”Few people were actually relaxed in Manhattan on Tuesday. The main protest march appeared to number about 6,500 people, who occupied a half-mile of pavement as it moved. Other marches occupied other streets and parks downtown. Every so often, protesters screamed expletives at police officers standing sentry behind steel barricades.MAAG:MAAG:When organizers of the march witnessed such interactions, they hustled over and began screaming instructions.“Do not engage! Do not engage!” yelled an organizer with a bullhorn, who refused to give her name. “Keep moving! We are not here to fight!”The converging and diverging marches snarled traffic all over the city. Some drivers minded intensely, and laid on their horns. Others enjoyed the opportunity to participate by accident.Paul Sanchez, an exterminator from Brooklyn, was driving to his next appointment at a town house in the East Village when his red work van became engulfed by the sea of protesters. The delay would make him late, but Sanchez didn’t mind. Instead he rolled down his windows and beeped his horn in time with the protesters’ chants.“This march must have just started. It didn’t show up on Waze,” he said. “I think it’s great. I hope it causes some change. All lives matter.”A few hours later, the march trapped Damien Yates in traffic. After dropping his mother off at her job as a nurse’s aide at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Queens, he was driving to his home in Irvington.Instead of getting angry at the delay, Yates climbed onto the roof of his Chrysler minivan, took off his purple Nike sneakers, and cheered the protesters on.“It’s a tragedy what happened to George Floyd,” said Yates, 38. “Protests are good, but nothing changes. Two weeks later, somebody else gets killed. I just hope this time it’s different.” there was no time for anyone to relax. Looters and onlookers ran, shouted expletives at police, then ran some more. Tuesday’s march was larger, and much more mellow. Even people who yelled angrily at police seemed to calm down quickly.Alex Langue led one of the angriest chants of the day. As the crowd marched east on 14th Street past Union Square, Langue looked police officers in the eye and raised his voice.“How do you spell murderer?” he yelled.“NYPD!” the crowd shouted back.“How do you spell racist?”“NYPD!” called the crowd.As the chant petered out, Langue was asked why he’d come.“George Floyd really was the last straw,” said Langue, 21, a student at New York University. “All we want is to live in peace.”At the southeast corner of Union Square, Langue and hundreds of other protesters stopped before a group of nurses gathered outside a Mount Sinai Hospital facility there. The nurses wore green scrubs and blue surgical masks to guard against COVID-19. Many held up their phones to shoot videos. Others held up their fists. All cheered.The protesters, struck by this show of solidarity, stopped and knelt. The nurses, about 50 in all, knelt, too.Story continues after galleryOne of the nurses was Lori Howard. She grew up in Los Angeles, and the last time she marched in a protest was in 1991, after police were videotaped beating Rodney King. Howard said she’s too scared to protest this time — between her age and the prevalence of COVID, she doesn’t think it’s safe. But she was happy to cheer the protesters on.“Every time my brother stepped out of our neighborhood when he was a teenager, he got stopped and harassed” by police in Los Angeles, said Howard, 50, who lives in Brooklyn. “And now I see that same type of police behavior here in New York. So yes,&nbsp;I think it’s absolutely great what these kids are doing.”It wasn’t just kids who marched, of course. Jai, the organizer, declined to give his age, but his mustache and goatee were silver and coated in sweat when he lowered his N95 mask. He kept imploring the younger protesters around him to slow down and keep the massive crowd together, partly for strategic reasons and partly because he was getting tired.“Please! People in the front, you’ve got to slow down. Please!” he said. “If we get separated, the police will cut us off. And we have to give the slower people time to catch up.”Paterson and Cordero seemed content to dawdle along toward the rear. Paterson waved a T-shirt printed with Floyd’s face and the words “Justice for George Floyd.” When people sitting on the sidewalk at 54th Street complimented her on the shirt, Paterson was more than happy to stop for a rest.“I don’t want our message and the looters to get mixed up,” she said. “We have great respect for police officers. Several members of my family are police officers. But the treatment of people of color as second-class citizens has got to stop.”Christopher Maag&nbsp;is a columnist for NorthJersey.com. To get unlimited access to his&nbsp;unique perspective on New Jersey’s most interesting people and experiences,&nbsp;Email:&nbsp;&nbsp;Twitter:&nbsp;View Comments

NorthJersey.comView CommentsNEW YORK — If you’ve been watching the news lately, then you might believe that all the people protesting police brutality in Atlanta and Cleveland and Reno and New York City aren’t really protesting at all. On television, on Facebook and Twitter, the people we see are mostly skinny young men smashing windows and stealing electronics from Verizon stores.If you’ve only been watching the protests from afar, you probably have never heard from people like Eloise Paterson and her friend Ramona Cordero. So please allow me to make the introduction. You may know...

Peaceful NYC protesters' message to America: 'Looters have nothing to do with us'

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