It wasn't too long ago that I referred to Al Sharpton as a "civic pest." Most others call him a racial arsonist. But I have learned a lot from Al Sharpton. While I still think Tawana Brawley is a liar and that he and the others who sprang to her defense just decided to go down with the ship that bore her falsehoods, Al Sharpton has, as one reporter put it, the only man capable of running a shadow government in our beloved New York in the Time of Giuliani.
It was about ten years ago that he held a Day of Outrage in which he and some of his supporters stopped subway traffic by jumping onto the tracks. I lived in Queens and to get home I had to pass through bad drug neighborhoods -- East New York and Bushwick. At the East New York junction where the BMT and IND lines meet, I suddenly found myself surrounded by police in full riot gear. It had not taken me long to get used to being the only white person in a subway car, but never did I feel more conspicuously white than when a dozen cops in riot gear surrounded me, as if they were there to protect me. I glanced over to a woman who just laughed her head off. We shared quite a telepathic joke.
"I guess they're here to protect you from me."
"Yup. It's embarassing."
Having two unpleasant experiences with the police myself, one in which I was blatantly and wrongly entrapped and didn't do anything wrong, and in the second, facing basic indifference when I was the victim of a gay pick-up crime, I am pleased no end to the two-plus-weeks of protests Al Sharpton has helped organize down at police headquarters. It started while I was away. In the end a couple of hundred folks have gone there specifically to get arrested. Black, Jewish, white, gay, all concerned. Mayor Giuliani remains defiant, defending those "heroes", the NYPD, with all his might. It's great to see the pressure being applied and watch the Mayor begin to crack. It's great to see everyone from Susan Sarrandon to Mayor Dinkins to teh NAACP's Kweisi Mfume to City Council member Christine Quinn all getting arrested and sending a message.
Once again, I feel like I ought to have been down there, but a week away and work work work. But eventually, I will take a day off and risk arrest. At this point, arrests are being made in an odd and orderly manner. You can practically choose: Stand here to protest, stand here to get arrested by appointment. It's not an easy choice to make, though. I wish they scheduled activist events for evening and weekends a bit more often, though.
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