World mirror
Status: 01.03.2021 11:00 a.m.
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Eight months after the “Black Lives Matter” protests, many black Americans are wondering what remains of the movement. Young New Yorkers are responding with confidence – despite the fact that their city has been subjected to severe police violence.
From Christiane Meier,
ARD-Studio New York
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“I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe!” – This is what many demonstrators shouted on June 4, 2020, who were crushed and beaten by the New York police in a planned cauldron. The scene was the Südbronx, the district of Mott Haven. Here, where the media rarely comes by and the racist exclusion of an entire population group is everyday life, the police showed their ugliest face. While the protests in Manhattan and Brooklyn were constantly followed by reporters, human rights violations in the Bronx often went unnoticed – at least initially.
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Christiane Meier
ARD capital studio
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The teacher Andon Ghebreghiorgis still cannot quite grasp what happened then. “We wanted to protest against police violence and we encountered this excessive police violence. What an irony. ‘I can’t breathe’ was like the refrain to the cases of police violence against Eric Garner in New York and George Floyd in Minnesota,” says Ghebreghiorgis.
Black Lives Matter Protests and the Consequences
Christiane Meier, ARD New York, Weltspiegel, 1.3.2021
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Demonstrators rounded up
Garner and Floyd were both choked to death during a police arrest. Floyd had called for his mother before dying in agony with his face on the asphalt under a cop’s knee. It took nine minutes, nine minutes that made “Black Lifes Matter” a mass movement last summer.
Hundreds of demonstrators had marched peacefully through Mott Haven that June 4th, until suddenly, shortly before the curfew began, they were faced with a police cordon. Policemen also came from behind and pushed the demonstrators together. Then a police operation began, which was unusual even for New York.
The defenseless demonstrators were beaten with batons, kicks and pepper spray, held for hours, then arrested and distributed across the city’s prisons.
The consequences remain
Many are still suffering from the consequences, they have suffered nerve damage because their hands were so tightly bound by plastic cuffs that the blood supply was cut off. You are afraid, still disturbed.
Others suffer from nightmares, such as Chantel Johnson, who was also trapped in the Mott Haven police cauldron and suddenly held a stranger in her arms while the police beat him on the back with batons. “I felt every blow. I held a man in my arms whom I didn’t even know and that in the middle of the corona crisis,” she says. “It still haunts me in my dreams.”
Johnson says the brutal hours in Mott Haven haunt her dreams.
Image: Christiane Meier
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Bitterness and hope
Johnson’s always wanted to be a cop, just like her mother used to be. Since the summer of last year she has discovered a new bitterness in herself, but also new hope. It owes both to “BLM”. She cannot and does not want to forget what she saw and experienced in the police station. And yet she believes in change. Also because the Mott Haven incident will now have consequences: The brutal police operation was filmed by countless cell phones and confirmed by hundreds of testimonies. Finally, even the renowned human rights organization Human Rights Watch documented the event. Your spokesperson Ida Sawyer says:
Our research clearly shows that this was a planned attack on peaceful protesters by the city’s highest police officer, Terrence Monahan, head of the NYPD. He personally led this mission, this attack on the spot.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James also collected testimony – not just on Mott Haven, but on other incidents of police violence during the summer protests.
During a three-day hearing, dozens of New Yorkers described hair-raising encounters with police. James has had enough now. She is suing the NYPD. “We have found outrageous abuse of police power,” she says. “Unrestrained use of force and unwillingness to end it. That is why we have now filed a lawsuit.”
Another perception
This gives hope to the activists and to many people who see themselves ostracized because of their skin color. Ghebreghiorgis is also cautiously optimistic.
The biggest change is the perception of police work in America. People never thought about that before. We can rethink what security means to us and what America should look like.
Andon Ghebreghiorgis says the perception of the police and their actions in the United States has changed.
Image: Christiane Meier
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Johnson has not forgotten anything of the brutality even after eight months. And yet she is also optimistic and believes that the first step on the way to change has been taken.
People are looking now, they feel sympathy and compassion. They change their minds. They see us as people of different skin colors than people.
Johnson no longer wants to go to the NYPD. The culture that prevails there repels them, she says. She does not want to be part of such a system. Instead, she is now a teacher for third graders at a privately run school.
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