That bit of information will come in handy later.
That's a view of the demonstrators, who managed to completely fit underneath the sidewalk shed. Guess it was too warm for them to try and walk out in the open. Folks who wanted no part of the demonstration were forced to scoot around the edges. Media types and the police were all along the fringes.
The police were mulling around across the street and easily matched or exceeded the number of demonstrators. They looked bored.
So was the media.
I'm not sure who the guy with the armband was, but it said legal observer. He must have been cataloging who was involved in the demonstration for the eventuality of when the police arrested someone. In the time I was viewing all this, no arrests.
And Marcellus Wallace was in the crowd.
It's lovely to have preprinted signs that show just how ignorant you are. Two of the three cops who were involved in the Bell shooting were black, as was Bell.
More flora and fauna from the demonstration. That poster is the flip side of the one calling the shooting racist and this side has nothing to do with the stated purpose of this demonstration, but rather to call for the end of all deportations and raids.
Like I said, the media was definitely bored.
After all, the crowd was busy showing everyone that they knew how to count to 50 - representing the 50 bullets used by the three NYPD officers involved in the shooting, and then repeated the chant We Shall Overcome.
I know this banner is difficult to read because of the angle, but it says Stop the Brutality - Fight Back Against the NYPD.
After a while of seeing that Sharpton had failed to show up by 3:20 or so, I headed back to the office. By the time I left work for the day, I figured that the demonstrators would have completely tied things up at the Holland Tunnel, just as they promised. Well, I was wrong. They didn't stick around, though a lonely news truck was still hanging out. In fact, they apparently all headed downtown closer to the entrance of the Holland Tunnel as I could see the gaggle of helicopters hovering over Lower Manhattan.
Apparently 190 of the protesters overall were arrested, including Sharpton, Bell's fiance, and other leaders of the demonstration. They were arrested once they started blocking off the bridges and tunnels. As I suspected, those legal observers were part and parcel of Sharpton's crew to keep things organized.
Unfortunately, I didn't get the real juicy photos of Sharpton and his gaggle getting arrested. There's always a next time.
UPDATE:
There was one other photo I wanted to include in this post. It shows that a good portion of those demonstrating were members of SEIU Local 32BJ, which is apparently the building workers union.
All photos were taken by lawhawk © 2008.
UPDATE:
The NY Times has more on the demonstrations, including a breakdown of where arrests were made. Apparently reports claiming that Sharpton would be at the Houston and Varick site were wrong - as he apparently went to One Police Plaza instead. There's no word on the total number of demonstrators involved, nor can one discern how many protesters were involved at the Sharpton-led protest, but if you have a close cropping of the photos, you can be assured that the numbers weren't all that great. Oh, and the NYT roundup totally misses the Houston and Varick demonstration site altogether and the comments to that effect are pretty funny.
UPDATE:
Gothamist actually has a photo of the Varick Street contingent blocking the street as they marched downtown. That photo conveys just how big the crowd really was, which is to say that it wasn't all that impressive at all as most of those mulling about were gawkers, media, or police.
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