About 50 yards from where hundreds of people massed Wednesday evening in Times Square to protest the decision by a grand jury not to indict a police officer in the death of Eric Garner, about two dozen tourists gazed up at themselves on a video display sponsored by Revlon.
The tourists chatted away in languages other than English and snapped photos of themselves snapping photos of themselves on the giant display that looms above Broadway.
Whatever selfies they snapped at street level may reveal in the background a sea of signs held aloft by protestors who had come to register the injustice of the chokehold death of a black man by a police officer on Staten Island last summer for allegedly selling loose cigarettes. As transgressions go, Garner’s offense roughly rivaled staring at oneself on a video display in the threat it posed to the general welfare.
“This is a clear-cut case of death by broken windows policing,” Stan Williams, a labor organizer from Brooklyn, told a reporter. “Was he selling loosies that day? If he was, take him to jail.”
As if the death of Garner, 43, who stood six feet three and whom locals described as a gentle giant, were not tragedy enough, the death of another black man at the hands of police suggests that America itself suffers from an illness of injustice that undermines the ideal that draws people here from around the world to snap selfies and pursue their dreams.
On Wednesday, beneath the LED displays for Dunkin Donuts, Stella Artois and a multitude of other products that illuminate Times Square, a series of signs penned in Sharpie spoke of a reality that has characterized America for far too long. “We want an indictment,” read one. “I can’t breathe,” read another, quoting Garner’s words as he lay dying.
“Mr. Garner’s death is one of several recent incidents across the country that have tested the sense of trust that must exist between law enforcement and the communities they are charged to serve and protect,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement Wednesday announcing that the Department of Justice will proceed with a federal civil rights investigation.
“This is not a New York issue or a Ferguson issue alone,” Holder added. He’s right of course. As President Obama said Wednesday, “This is an American problem.”
Obama on #EricGarner: “This is an American problem” – http://t.co/Kto3taz4yV
— Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) December 4, 2014
“We can’t imagine we’re the city on the hill or a country where equality reigns when people are being brutalized,” said Williams. As another protestor remarked to a reporter from Europe 1 radio: “I just feel like everyone should give a shit about this.”