Protests over the decision not to indict Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson for killing Mike Brown were still happening when
a new wave of protests was called up by the decision of a Staten Island, New York, grand jury not to indict police officer Daniel Pantaleo for killing Eric Garner, on video, using a banned chokehold in what was later ruled a homicide.
A wave of protests erupted from Manhattan to Oakland, Calif. Thousands in New York marched in support of Eric Garner, a 43-year-old asthmatic who died after being put in a chokehold by officer Daniel Pantaleo on July 17.
They shut down the Lincoln Tunnel. They shut down the West Side Highway. They shut down the Brooklyn Bridge, where officers threatened them with arrest if they did not move as a helicopter hovered above. [...]
They marched against traffic from Times Square toward Union Square. They staged a “die-in” at Grand Central Terminal and tried to disrupt the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting.
And they chanted the slogan heard around the country after Brown was killed by Wilson in Ferguson — “Hands up, don’t shoot” — as well as what may have been Garner’s last words: “I can’t breathe.”
One thing—one small thing—you can say for New York City is that at least some of its officials
responded more appropriately than did Missouri lawmakers:
“The failure to indict is a stunning miscarriage of justice, and makes clear that equal protection under the law does not exist for all Americans,” said Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from Brooklyn who, along with other members of New York’s congressional delegation, spoke at the Capitol to call for a federal investigation into Mr. Garner’s death.
“What more does America need to see?” Mr. Jeffries said. “We are better than this as a country.”
Are we, though? Isn't what we're seeing that we may not be better than this as a country? But the protests, those protests measured by the media and politicians according to how peaceful they are, may be our best sign that something better is possible. Because things don't change if people don't fight for them to change.