Mayor de Blasio call for a temporary halt to protests

So the protests have stopped being fun for Mayor de Blasio, and he would like all of the protesters to please stop protesting this week until the city has time to mourn and say goodbye to two NYPD officers who were murdered last Saturday.

From NBC’s WHDH.com:

I think it’s important that, regardless of people’s viewpoints, that everyone step back,” de Blasio said in a speech Monday at the Police Athletic League. “I think it’s a time for everyone to put aside political debates, put aside protests, put aside all of the things that we will talk about in all due time.

This call for peace between protesters and police – implying that there is a war, rather than one group of people making use of their constitutionally protected rights to rally and protest the inequity apparent to all – puts all of the burden on protesters to stand down, to put their rights on hold, so the city can mourn these two cops. In return, cops will stop making inflammatory statements about protesters (and if he’s lucky, about Mayor de Blasio).

Like much having to do with protester-police interactions, this hardly seems equitable.

This isn’t Mayor de Blasio’s peace/truce/good-will-to-all-men to offer up. He – and by extension, the police – aren’t the wronged party in these protests.

And to make note: one vigilante cop killer is not the same thing as decades of institutionalized police brutality. One black man murdering two policemen does not mean that racism no longer exists.

No one should be murdered. Murdering people is bad. But by calling for the halt to protests so the city has time to mourn Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, while asking the family and friends of Eric Garner and all of those who have lost family to police brutality to put aside their grievances for the moment, that doesn’t feel right.

Mayor de Blasio call for a temporary halt to protests
{advertisement}