On the corner of Tillary Street and the Flatbush Avenue Extension, there's a building surrounded by police barricades. I walk past it every day on my way over the bridge on my long trek from Sunset Park to Manhattan, one of the few things that's kept me sane over the last year. Today I looked at the barriers and noticed that they all had "New York Stock Exchange" written on them.
"Wow," I though to myself. "This would make a good photograph and dramatize the linkages between finance capital and the hopeland security state." So I whipped out my cell phone and took a picture, but it came out bad, so I hit "discard."
Suddenly I heard shouting. A police officer - usually stationed near the barricades, had jumped out of his NYPDgolfmobile and was screaming at me.
"Did you just take a picture? Did you take a picture of the barricade?"
I was stunned. I knew that the NYPD had been attempting to ban photography in the subways (unsucessfully,) but we weren't in the subway and there was no way anything i was doing should have been grounds for suspicion - leaving aside whether or not what the cop did was legal.
The officer demanded to see my picture and to know why I took it. I should have said "what gives you the right to ask," or demanded to see his badge number or something, but instead i basically went limp and complied and then he walked away and i turned towards the bridge and walked away, anger and frustration and a feeling of violation seeping into my thoughts and manifesting themselves in a panicked fury and overwhelming sense of powerlessness.
Walking over the bridge and staring out at the city, I wanted to throw my umrella over the fence, or smash it and then throw it over, or scream at the top of my lungs. I wanted to go back to the cop and yell at him - calll him a fascist, whatever.
But instead i kept walking, and seethed, and stared at my cellular phone, which now apparently doubles as a weapon of mass destruction.
Would he have let me go if I weren't a middle class white man?
no. he would not have let you go. he would have sodomized you with yr cell phone prior to releasing the hounds.
ReplyDeletei meant to write hoMeland security state. weird typo
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