#256: JUNE 2020 • INDYPENDENT.ORG THE INDYPENDENT SIRENS AND BIRDS WILL NOT BE OUR EPITAPH. SOLIDARITY CANNOT BE QUARANTINED. IT IS INFECTIOUS. A WARNING TO THE WISE: LOOK OUT! WE ARE ON THE RISE. DON’T TRY TO STOP US. LEIA DORAN LEIA BLACK LIVES MATTER COVERAGE, BEGINS P2 2 THE INDYPENDENT NEW YORK THE INDYPENDENT, INC. 388 Atlantic Avenue, 2nd Floor RISING Brooklyn, NY 11217 Photos by Sue Brisk 212-904-1282 Text by Indypendent Staff www.indypendent.org Twitter: @TheIndypendent can’t breathe.” facebook.com/TheIndypendent “ New Yorkers heard those anguished BOARD OF DIRECTORS: words before, from Eric Garner. When Ellen Davidson, Anna Gold, they heard them from George Floyd, Alina Mogilyanskaya, Ann they sprang into action by the tens Schneider, John Tarleton Ithousands — marching, chanting, singing, kneeling, defying curfew, battling the police EXECUTIVE EDITOR: and setting their cop cars on fire. John Tarleton The protesters come from all races and walks of life. Their demands are 400 years MANAGING EDITOR: in the making — value black life equally. End Peter Rugh police violence. End systemic racism. Lift the knee that crushes the hopes and dreams of CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Ellen Davidson, Alina the majority of people in this winner-take-all Mogilyanskaya, Nicholas capitalist system. Powers, Steven Wishnia As The Indy goes to press in early June, similar protests are taking place in cities and ILLUSTRATION DIRECTOR: towns in all 50 states and around the world. Frank Reynoso With their spectacular, unrelenting displays of brutality, the cops have done more in a DESIGN DIRECTOR: short time to advance the cause of ending po- Mikael Tarkela licing as we know it than activists have in the past decade. DESIGNERS: It’s impossible to say what direction this Leia Doran, Anna Gold, Evan rebellion will take. But one thing is clear — Sult we are living in extraordinary times and our ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGER: assumptions about how far and how fast we Dean Patterson can transform the institution of policing will continue to change. INTERN: Kiara Thomas GENERAL INQUIRIES: [email protected] SUBMISSIONS & NEWS TIPS: [email protected] ADVERTISING & PROMOTION: [email protected] VOLUNTEER CONTRIBUTORS: Linda Martín Alcoff, Charlyne Alexis, Eleanor Bader, Bennett Baumer, Jenny Blair, Sue Brisk, Valerio Ciriaci, Rico Cleffi, Renée Feltz, Lynne Foster, Emma Gaffney, Amba Guerguerian, Esteban Guerra, Theodore Hamm, David Hollenbach, Manvi Jalan, Carrie Klein, Derek Ludovici, Martin Mahoney, Leonardo March, Gary Martin, Farid Nassif, Tiffany Pai, Donald Paneth, Libby Rainey, Mark Read, Reverend Billy, Olivia Riggio, Chelsey Sanchez, Steven Sherman, Julia Thomas, IN THIS ISSUE and Tyrone Wallace. VOLUNTEER DISTRIBUTORS: Erik Anders-Nilssen, Eric Brelsford, Chris & Pam Brown, Hank Dombrowski, Joseph Epstein, Kim Frazcek, March 2020 March Lew Friedman, Mindy 4 5 6 8 9 10 11 Gershon, Tami Gold, Priscilla BLACK LIVES, THE NEWS IN WILL PIGS RECLAIMING THIS SYSTEM RENT STRIKE! INSURGENT Grim, Laura Kaplan, Michael LIT FUSES BRIEF LIVE HIGH THE STREETS IS SICKENING CANDIDATES Korn, Jane LaTour, Dave ON THE TAKE ON THE Lippman, Ashley Marinaccio, Christine Miller, Saul Nieves, HOG MUCH MACHINE Caroline Rath, Liam Reilly, LONGER? Norm Scott, Carol Smith, and THE INDYPENDENT Becky Vaughan. 3 IN THIS ISSUE March 2020 March 12 16 17 18 19 20 22 23 THE INDYPENDENT AN NYC VOTERS CONFRONTING THE FAR RIGHT CINEMA AN ESSENTIAL REMEMBERING NEW BOOK REV BILLY’S GUIDE TO ANTI-ASIAN FIGHTS FOR AGAINST HISTORY OF FRANCES GIVES OLD ANTI-RACIST THE JUNE 23 RACISM ITS RIGHT TO CAPITALISM ESSENTIAL GOLDIN LADIES THEIR HELP HOTLINE PRIMARIES PARTY WORKERS DUE 4SEX WORKER RIGHTS In their long New York lives, they’ve Text after text came. heard too many gunshots and seen too “Are you coming?” “We’ll be at this rally. Join!” “We’re many dead. They watched mayors bringing this system DOWN.” WHY WE make promises that never came true or “Maybe,” I texted back. I knew I was going. But the video protests that shook the city but left no had to be seen first. Googling up George Floyd, I saw his face lasting change. To protect themselves on screen, lifted it to sky where he looked like a patron saint, a from the vulnerability of hope, they big handsome man that could blow the helicopters away. EXPLODE developed a stoic fatalism. Nothing The link to his recorded murder was there and I pressed it. gets better. Just do your hustle, man. A wobbly camera showed three cops crushing him with their “I gotta go. Things to do,” T. said knees. “I can’t breathe man. Please.” Chauvin grinds his knee By Nicholas Powers and we bumped elbows. What hope he had left was stuffed into Floyd’s neck. “I can’t move.” He gasps. “Mama.” Eyes into a zip lock bag and thrown into the cavern we carry. Splash. shut. No breathing. I stopped the video. refused to see him die. I did not look at the newspapers He had been arrested once. When he got out, we cheered. His last words echoed in the night. Helpless and scared, he in bodegas or on Facebook, or texts from friends. At a Damn near everyone here has been in detention at one time or called for his mother. The father in me wanted to push the cops restaurant, a TV showed a white cop kneeling on a Black another. It is to be expected. off and stand him up, wrap my arms around Floyd as if he man’s neck, and I left before eating. Jail gave us crazy hallway talk-a-thons, and midnight stoop were my son and tell him he’s safe. The video of Officer Derek Chauvin killing George confessions. I laughed at neighbors’ tales of faking illness to get In a way, he was my son. He was my father too. And broth- IFloyd ripped the scab off our Blackness. Inside, where Color out of jail and into a hospital, or masturbating so much it hurt. er. He was my uncle and grandfather. He was my aunt, sister connects us, pain throbbed. We just buried our grandparents At some point, the tone shifted. I heard of rape, or of learning and mother. He was every one of us, because all of us can see and friends who died from COVID-19. We just lost our jobs. after a funeral that an aunt or grandpa had died, or their child ourselves or someone we love in him. When he died, a piece Maybe the worst was over? I mean, damn, can we catch a not running into their arms when they came out. They gasped, of us died. break? mid-sentence, as if drowning in themselves. I closed my eyes and Floyd’s face fell like a shooting star, Outside the bodega, neighbors stared at cellphones, faces It is easy to get caught out there. Lord. I’ve seen old men down, down into that place where the night in jail was bur- twisted in horror. “Did you see how they did that brother?” stopped and frisked, and teens carrying groceries. My ex-room- ied in my body. The deeper it went, the more it illuminated. I “I can’t breathe?” “Fuck the police!” I saw open pain in their mate, a Nigerian student, went out for a loosie, and came back saw again, Sean Bell in the casket, and remembered how young eyes. Beneath their mask of street machismo was a deep under- wild-eyed and sweaty. The police stopped and frisked him. His he looked, and I heard again T. saying how he missed his kid ground cavern where life’s bitterness had pooled. And Floyd’s hands shook while lighting the cigarette. I tried to avoid that while locked up, and, further in, I saw again Eric Garner, San- death was a lit match falling in. fate with middle-class camouflage. Nice clothes. Nice diction. dra Bland, Tamir Rice, even deeper, Emmett Till and the Scotts- The next day the news showed Minneapolis burning. And Didn’t work. I was busted for an unpaid fine. The cop clamped boro Boys, and the nameless burnt bodies of Black people then D.C. burned. And Brooklyn too. lynched as white crowds cheered, and, Headlines focused on the fire. Pundits deeper yet, was the memory of white focused on police brutality. But it was boys in a car, shouted slurs at me and larger than Floyd’s murder. The white speeding off as I threw a rock, or hear- officer who killed him was a symbol OUR BODIES CARRY THE HURT THAT ing that my best friend’s dad had called of racism. In this case, police brutality. me a “nigger friend.” In other cases, the violence is muted. SLOSHES INSIDE LIKE A SEA OF The obscene light of Floyd’s death Our bodies carry the hurt that sloshes illuminated not my pain but the pain inside like a sea of gasoline and it, not GASOLINE. others shared with me, like the night the latest headline, is what sets the a Black poet told me her sister, a sex world ablaze. worker who sold herself to mostly white men, died of a drug overdose, or handcuffs on me. I spent 16 hours in jail. I paced the dirty cell a Black man I met walking home at night lifted his shirt to TO SERVE & PROTECT in an endless circle, breathing in and out slowly. show me knife scars. Or a close friend, embarrassed at wearing After I paid the fine and was released, that night in jail wigs after years of straightening cream had burned her scalp A police SUV whooshed by us. We swiveled our heads to fol- plummeted somewhere inside me.