Coalition of Student Groups brings Middle East politics to Bay Ridge, takes to the street

August 21, 2015 By Albin Lohr-Jones Special to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle

A demonstrator listens attentively to one of the rally speakers. Eagle photos by Albin Lohr-Jones

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The bloodshed over contested territories in Israel and Palestine may be thousands of miles away, but several dozen protesters sought to bring the debate home with a rally and march in Bay Ridge. Organized by members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a national network of campus-based anti-Zionist activists, the preliminary part of the event convened on the plaza of Leif Ericson Park at 67th Street and Sixth Avenue.

Aug. 26 will be the first anniversary of the official end of the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict, which the United Nations Human Rights Commission claims resulted in the death of 2,251 people. To mark the occasion and draw attention to lack of progress made toward defusing Palestinian and Israeli tensions, numerous events are scheduled to occur throughout the city.

But for otherwise sleepy Bay Ridge, far from the customary sites of political demonstration (think Foley Square, Zuccotti Park, etc.), the rally and brief march were untypical. The choice, though, of Bay Ridge — sometimes referred to as “Little Palestine” on account of the sizable immigrant community calling it home — was auspicious. Demonstrators aimed to bring their demand for Palestinian sovereignty home to the very community whose relatives in their native land live with the day-in and day-out reality of armed conflict, and to rouse it into action.

While mostly composed of college students from local SJP chapters at various CUNY campuses and NYU, the rally drew a group of Southeast Asian children and an unexpected contingent of Brooklyn-based Neturei Karta who, though Jewish, fervently protest against the state of Israel and support Palestinian statehood. Several rabbis from the Neturei Karta addressed the crowd at the rally, declaring their support.

After the conclusion of official speeches by representatives of different SJP chapters and by members of popular action groups such as the Revolutionary Student Coordinating Committee, the demonstrators set off on foot toward Fifth Avenue, chanting pro-Palestinian slogans along 67th Street under the watchful eyes of NYPD Community Affairs officers who drove in a car alongside the group as marchers traveled on the sidewalk.

On Fifth Avenue itself, much to their consternation, the group unfortunately didn’t make it far before NYPD suspended their progress and ordered that they not pass beyond Bay Ridge Avenue. After some verbal wrangling between two of the key organizers of the event and an NYPD officer, the demonstrators retraced their path and retreated to the park, but with a new set of chants vocalizing their frustrations at the NYPD.

Though the protesters themselves did not leave the sidewalk, the mobilization of police vehicles dispatched as a precaution accomplished the same type of disruption to transportation achieved otherwise by bodies in the street at recent political events in the city: rush-hour traffic on Fifth Avenue came to a virtual standstill. As to whether or not the demonstrators were successful at rallying the population of Bay Ridge into political action, one can only sSpeculate. But it was apparent from the number of cheers and smiles cast at them from bystanders, that their message was indeed heard.