The American Divide, Patriots Park, June 26

BLM protesters send message to police supporters

Tar­ry­town’s Pa­tri­ots Park be­came just one of many hotbeds of Amer­i­can dis­union Fri­day evening. A po­lice bar­ri­cade split the park down the mid­dle for a Back the Blue Rally on the north end of the park, counter-protested by a Black Lives Mat­ter rally to the south. The BTB event was or­ga­nized by John Stiloski, owner of the lo­cal Tar­ry­town tow­ing com­pany. Demon­stra­tors gath­ered to show sup­port for their lo­cal po­lice de­part­ment, many of them wear­ing shirts that read “Back the blue, they are here for you,” “Busi­nesses for Po­lice…We thank our he­roes,” and “Our po­lice force is great. Stop the pol­i­tics. No de­fund­ing.”

Black Lives Mat­ter protests have erupted across the na­tion since the May 25th death of George Floyd at the hands of po­lice in Min­neapo­lis. The fo­cus of many BLM protests is on po­lice bru­tal­ity and sys­temic racism in the U.S crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. In Tar­ry­town alone, there have been four BLM protests, as well as con­ver­sa­tions re­gard­ing the Po­lice De­part­men­t’s bud­get--cur­rently $5 mil­lion an­nu­ally for a po­lice force of 35—num­bers far in ex­cess of what is needed for a pop­u­la­tion of 11,399, in the view of many pro­test­ers.

The BLM turnout out­num­bered po­lice sup­port­ers in the park Fri­day evening by about three to one, but those who came out to sup­port the po­lice saw of­fi­cers as their neigh­bors, their friends, per­haps some­one they went to school with. Many said they feel their com­mu­ni­ties are safe and that the po­lice have pro­tected them. Anti-po­lice protest­ing, they said, has no place in a small, “safe” com­mu­nity.

Stiloski boasted of hav­ing friends and fam­ily who work in law en­force­ment. He said the pur­pose of their rally was clear: to show lo­cal law en­force­ment that the com­mu­nity ap­pre­ci­ates them. He claimed he could not com­pre­hend why BLM protest their lo­cal po­lice. “What are they protest­ing? We don’t have bad po­lice here. There’s a counter protest to protest good cops that are try­ing to come out and do the right thing every day for their com­mu­nity,” stated Stiloski.

San­dra Aderemi, 16, a res­i­dent of Sleepy Hol­low, or­ga­nized the BLM counter protest, which drew an es­ti­mated 300 demon­stra­tors, many of them of high school and col­lege age. Their mis­sion was to con­tinue to el­e­vate Black voices and op­pose what they saw as the Back the Blue move­men­t’s at­tempted sub­ver­sion of BLM.

Aderemi claimed that the pro-po­lice demon­stra­tors wrongly see the BLM move­ment as anti-po­lice, when re­ally it is only anti-racist. “It all just comes back to a re­fusal to be ed­u­cated.” re­fusal to ac­cept that maybe these be­liefs you’ve held onto for so long might sim­ply be wrong and prej­u­diced. You asked me why I thought ‘Back the Blue’ was protest­ing, and I will put it in the sim­plest words: un­will­ing­ness to lis­ten.”

As chants from the BLM rally grew louder, the BTB gath­er­ing turned up the vol­ume on a sound sys­tem mounted on one of the Stiloski tow trucks, blast­ing the Na­tional An­them, “God Bless Amer­ica” and AB­BA’s “Danc­ing Queen dur­ing BLM speeches. It was soon clear that the com­mon goal of these two events was not to lis­ten but to drown the other out.

Hen­der­son Clarke, whose brother, Ka­mal Flow­ers, was fa­tally shot by a New Rochelle po­lice of­fi­cer two weeks ago, emerged as a fea­tured or­a­tor of the event, first ad­dress­ing the BLM gath­er­ing but then mov­ing to­ward the metal bar­ri­ers po­lice had erected to sep­a­rate the groups. Stand­ing on a bench, he di­rectly ad­dressed BTB sup­port­ers pressed up against the bar­rier. “I see a whole bunch of of­fi­cers and what they’re try­ing to do is quiet this rally by hav­ing their speak­ers blown loud,” shouted Clarke. “To the of­fi­cers who are hav­ing their rally, what are we gonna do to solve the sep­a­ratism prob­lem? I see the as­so­ci­a­tion be­hind there, hold­ing your signs. I have noth­ing wrong to say about you. You are not the en­emy, but what you’re do­ing is caus­ing you to be­come the en­emy.”

Be­hind him, young BLM pro­test­ers, many with provoca­tive signs, chanted fa­mil­iar phrases. Most of the crowd stuck to their re­spec­tive sides of the bar­ri­cade, lis­ten­ing to their own speeches, seem­ingly locked in their own opin­ions. Is­sues sur­round­ing de­fund­ing the po­lice, and whether Black Lives Mat­ter or All Lives Mat­ter con­tin­ued to be a game of bro­ken tele­phone.

For most pro­gres­sives, de­fund­ing the po­lice does not mean abol­ish­ing de­part­ments but re­al­lo­cat­ing funds away from para­mil­i­tary equip­ment and ap­ply­ing them to un­der­funded pro­grams in ed­u­ca­tion, pub­lic health, hous­ing and youth ser­vices. When oth­ers hear de­mands to de­fund, they hear crime and an­ar­chy. “De­fund­ing the po­lice means there is no more po­lice de­part­ment. That’s what it means. Plain and sim­ple,” said Frank Mor­gan­thaler, a re­tired New York City fire­man and ex-Ma­rine who stood with BTB. “We need them. If we don’t have them, we have chaos.”

To­ward the end of the protest, which lasted nearly three hours, Aderemi and other BLM demon­stra­tors ap­proached the bar­ri­cade, hop­ing to bridge the gap around some of these po­lar­iz­ing is­sues. “I was called a lot of things, but that did­n’t stop me from try­ing to ed­u­cate them,” she said. Aderemi pointed to each demon­stra­tor lin­ing the fence and told them that while their lives mat­tered, it is im­por­tant to fight specif­i­cally for black lives. One BTB pro­tester seemed in­ca­pable of say­ing “Black Lives Mat­ter” with­out re­flex­ively adding, “Yes, but all lives do!”

“Their mes­sage was clear: that ‘All Lives Mat­ter,’” re­sponded Aderemi. “But they failed to un­der­stand that this very state­ment is why we are protest­ing. We want this very state­ment to be TRUE. How­ever, it’s not. Four hun­dred years of suf­fer­ing.”

“I just hope that we touched some hearts on the ‘Back the Blue’ side yes­ter­day,” said Aderemi. “I hope they can see the power in kids or­ga­niz­ing a rally to fight for their lives. I hope they can lis­ten.”

With per­sis­tence and ded­i­ca­tion, Aderemi got through to one man any­way. Car­ry­ing an ‘All Lives Mat­ter’ sign, he walked away from the fence, paused to turn his sign around and write on the back: ‘Black Lives Mat­ter.’ His new sign in hand, he re­turned to the bar­rier.