The sidewalk outside of Duane Park, on Hudson Street, briefly became the scene of a protest against the non-indictment of the police officer involved in the death of Eric Garner. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
A quiet group of 11 demonstrators briefly lay down on the sidewalk on Hudson Street in front of Tribeca’s Duane Park Wednesday evening. The “die-in” was yet another demonstration against the non-indictment of the police officer involved in the choking death of Eric Garner.
The protesters lay sprawled outside the park fence for seven minutes, the length of time that Garner remained on the ground after his death at the hands of the officer, Daniel Pantaleo.
“I can’t breathe,” the demonstrators called out, some holding signs bearing those words in English and Spanish.
One driver going by was heard to yell, “Too bad they’re not really dead!” while another honked in support.
No police were present at the demonstration.
The protest was organized by the civil rights group LatinoJustice PRLDEF (Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund), which previously held die-ins in other locations, including the front of One Police Plaza and Amityville, Long Island.They had also been part of the Millions March protest across the city on Saturday.
Duane Park provided a different kind of setting for the group, said Jazmin Chavez, an organizer of the group.
“We were really hoping to disrupt a space that hasn’t seen these types of die-ins, so we decided to do it in Tribeca where there is so much wealth and privilege,” Chavez said. “We wanted to bring it to people in this area and show them that this impacts them too.”
Skip Blumberg, a local resident and president of Friends of City Hall Park, said he joined the demonstration because he considered Pantaleo’s case “a shocking miscarriage of justice.”
“You do what you can to make a difference in the world,” Blumberg said, and then joked, “But lying on the pavement in December, ‘dying,’ is really cold.”
Chilly weather aside, Blumberg, who also attended Saturday’s Millions March, called his participation in these protests “very satisfying.”
“It’s something that I think everybody can feel good about doing,” he said.