Daniel Maurer At Astor Place shortly before 4 p.m.Hundreds of people protesting police brutality have marched from Union Square, down Broadway, down East 8th Street and St. Marks Place, and through Tompkins Square Park heading toward Avenue D. Follow The Local and its editor on Twitter as we tweet minute-by-minute updates from the scene. Tweet us your own updates and add photos to our Flickr pool as you take them. We’ll have more from the scene as this unfolds.
Update | 7:15 p.m. The event was the October 22nd Coalition’s 16th Annual National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. Similar marches were planned in 27 other cities today. The march ended with a gathering at Avenue D and East Sixth Street, outside of the Jacob Riis Houses, where a group of about 350 – including members of the Communist organization Ignite, Occupy The Hood, and others – listened to short call-and-response speeches.
Among those who took the bullhorn were Carl Dix of the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Stop Mass Incarceration Network (which spearheaded a “Stop and Frisk” protest that ended in the arrest of Cornel West and others in Harlem yesterday) as well as the parents of Elijah Foster-Bey, a teenager who was involved in a shootout with police in Brooklyn a year ago. “Shoot first, ask questions later is not right,” said Mr. Foster-Bey’s mother, Ellen Cross.
About 65 police officers lined Avenue D, many of them riding motor scooters and some of them surveying the scene from rooftops as demonstrators chanted, “Come down and face the truth, no hiding on the roof.” Their number had dwindled to about 20 community affairs officers by 6 p.m., when the crowd began thinning. The Stop Mass Incarceration Network will organize their next demonstration against “stop and frisk” policies during a meeting at St. Mary’s Church in Harlem, tomorrow at 2 p.m.
Update | Oct. 23, 12:45 a.m. We’ve now posted video from the demonstration. Watch it here.
