Police await chain cutting tools while members of a group protesting the demolition of New York's community gardens block a major Manhattan intersection for 58 minutes during Monday Morning rush hour. Although there were television crews from two major network affiliates and still photographers from all the major daily newspapers covering the story, No one ran it. (New York 1997)
The Full Story Follows
Early one Monday morning in New York, a small group of demonstrators gathered at the exit of a busy downtown subway station near Wall Street to protest the city bulldozing of community gardens. They held signs, distributed literature and demonstrated peacefully. It was almost boring, and I only saw a couple of other photographers there. Suddenly group leaders said "OK Go!" and the forty or so demonstrators all ran around the corner and down the block to a busy intersection where five of their members had chained themselves across the street. Within minutes, there were five more still photographers and two television crews on the scene.The police arrived shortly after but did not seem to know what to do. They simply awaited instructions while traffic backed up to the Williamsburg Bridge, and the stand-off continued until a very irate captain showed up. The man was furious. He stormed down the middle of the street past the journalists and ripped a banner from the demonstrators' hands to see the chain they had used to lock themselves to light posts on either side of the street then turned and began screaming at the journalists, "Get on the sidewalk or you´re going to jail!" He grabbed the sleeve of my jacket and flung my shoulder toward the curb to show me what direction it was, while repeating the phrase. Then he yelled it into the camera of the local ABC affiliate. Finally, a man arrived with bolt cutters, and the five people were taken in to custody without further incident. They had blocked a major Manhattan intersection for 58 minutes on a Monday morning and made the police appear foolish and ineffective. WABC Noon News lead with a story about a Wall Street publicity event announcing that a food company had gone public. It featured dancing cans and jars of the company´s fine products. The story of the demonstrators blocking the intersection was not carried by either TV station, nor any of the local newspapers. One would had to have been there to know what had happened: They had gone to jail for nothing.