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After five hours of rallies and marches on justice for Palestine and Ferguson, 1,500 protesters were in Union Square park in Manhattan, all with their hands up for Mike Brown. When the crowd took their hands down, a voice from the crowd told them “Mike Brown never took his hands down. The dead children in Gaza did not get to take their hands down.”
And so it was on this dramatic ending to a long day of complimentary marches in New York Wednesday: the NYC Solidarity with Palestine March over the Brooklyn Bridge and the Hands Up/ Turn Up march in remembrance of Mike Brown energized activists and community members who stood up to racism and oppression “from Ferguson to Palestine.”
A highlight of the solidarity with Palestine march came when activists were able to drop a large banner with the colors of the Palestinian flag from the Manhattan Bridge (facing the march on the Brooklyn Bridge). Text in the flag read “Gaza in our Hearts. Boycott. Divest. Sanction.”
Pictures of the flag billowing from the Manhattan Bridge quickly went viral on social media.
Protesters marched across the Brooklyn Bridge to One Police Plaza in order to call out Mayor De Blasio and NYPD Police Commissioner Bill Bratton for what organizer Nastaran Mohit called “their criminal silence on the issue of Palestine” even as they coordinate and train with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
Many of the protesters from the Palestine march joined the #HandsUp #TurnUp on NYC march.
Joel Northam, a past contributor to Acronym TV, was among them. He described the link this way: “we have people of color living in def-acto internal colonies in the United States. There are no borders. There are only the oppressed and the oppressors.”
The facebook event page for the #Handsup #TurnUp NYC march foreshadowed the confrontational tone of the march:
“Another Black man dead. This would be just another day like every other day in America, if it weren’t for one simple fact: Ferguson turned out, stood up, and has refused to get back on its knees.
Mike Brown was days away from college? Don’t care.
Didn’t he steal some cigars? Don’t care.
What about the looters? Don’t care.
Mike Brown’s life was of value–is of value. Full stop. No college degree makes that so; no robbery takes that away. The people of Ferguson recognize this. White supremacy’s subtle baiting of thievery, college degrees and saggy pants and talking back does not.
We talk back. We turn up. We stand tall. With Ferguson–for Mike, for every black body in America robbed of its right to live–for every injustice that we are growing sick and tired of. We are done with your police/media slander campaigns. We are sick with anger.
It is too late for containing it.
Not another. Not another. Not one more.
We will turn down for nothing until justice is ours.”
TAGS
Ferguson, tear gas, Mike Brown, Darren Wilson, Riot police, Mike Brown, Hands up, Hands up don’t shoot, Palestine, Gaza, Palestine flag, Brooklyn Bridge, March For Palestine, BDS, Boycott, Divest, Sanction, Boycott Divest Sanction, Dennis Trainor Jr, Acronym TV, #NYC2GAZA, #HandsUp #TurnUp, #HandsUp #TurnUp NYC,
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Dennis Trainor, Jr. is a writer, host and producer. His documentary on the Occupy movement, American Autumn: an Occudoc, garnered critical praise from The New York Times, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and more. He also wrote and directed Legalize Democracy, a documentary short about the Movement To Amend the Constitution. Trainor was an embedded YouTube personality/media advisor on the staff of Dennis Kucinich’s 2008 presidential campaign and his work is regularly published on The Huffington Post, Truth Out, The Real New Network, Popular Resistance and several others