It was not just the summer of the pandemic—it was the summer of worldwide protest against police brutality. In New York, the NYCLU was there to make sure that activists were not silenced with COVID as an excuse.
In May, as public gatherings were banned to prevent COVID spread, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed new executive orders that allowed groups of up to 10 people to commemorate Memorial Day or religious events—all the while upholding orders banning protest and First Amendment-related activity. We filed suit against the inconsistency, and Cuomo quickly reversed the protest ban.
Just in time, it turned out. At the end of the month and into June, protests exploded in New York City and state, as well as worldwide, in the wake of police killings of Minnesota’s George Floyd and Kentucky’s Breonna Taylor, plus the racist murder of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. The NYCLU’s protest monitoring program proved to be crucial as we trained more than 100 monitors to document police responses to demonstrations and be a resource to protestors if needed. Local governments and law enforcement officials around the state responded with even more police violence and arrests, packing jails—which threatened to further spread COVID. We demanded that leaders like NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio prioritize de-escalation as opposed to more police involvement.
And we immediately condemned curfews set in NYC and other cities statewide, insisting that they would inevitably be enforced mostly against Black and Brown New Yorkers. We were right. After nearly a week of curfews in NYC that only ratcheted up police violence in the midst of a pandemic, we warned de Blasio that we’d sue if he decided to extend the curfew. Under pressure, he lifted the curfew a day earlier than originally planned.
In October, once the city had calmed down, we partnered with the Legal Aid Society in filing a lawsuit against the city, NYPD leaders and several individual officers for their roles in the attacks on protesters. On NY1, NYCLU head Donna Lieberman, discussing the suit, said that incidents of officers “wielding their batons and charging at peaceful protesters” were “brutal, an assault and illegal.”
In 2021 and beyond, the NYCLU will continue to alert our supporters to civil rights issues, organize direct actions and create public demonstration opportunities. Why shouldn’t we? It’s our right.