On Saturday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put her socialist seal of approval on the anti-cop demonstrations that went down in Brooklyn on Friday night. Her defiant tweet of support included a video of demonstrators jumping over subway turnstiles, yelling at the police with insults, and chanting, “How do you spell racist? N-Y-P-D,” as Fox News reported.
That video posted by a third party was later deleted from Twitter.
“Ending mass incarceration means challenging a system that jails the poor to free the rich,” Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, whose district includes parts of the Bronx and Queens, tweeted. “Arresting people who can’t afford a $2.75 fare makes no one safer and destabilizes our community. New Yorkers know that, they’re not having it, and they’re standing up for each other.”
As the New York Post reported, the protests involved almost a thousand unruly troublemakers, some of whom blocked traffic and vandalized a city bus, in addition to insulting police officers, defacing cop cars, and carrying large banners that said: “Don’t let these pigs touch us” and “F*** the police.”
Among the banners being paraded through the streets were ones exhorting violence against the police, such as one that read: “Punch that Cop!!” and “Hit Em!”
The protest was partly organized by “Decolonize This Place,” a Marxist-based group that, according to its website, is an “action-oriented movement centering around Indigenous struggle, Black liberation, free Palestine, global wage workers and de-gentrification.”
Other reports said that, there were also a number of extreme-left groups involved in organizing the Friday protests.
Organizers and participants indicated the large turnout was in response to a planned crackdown on subway fare evasion via increased police staffing, as well as recent controversial police actions in the city’s subways.
The Post related how a city bus was engulfed by the parading protest and vandalized as passengers feared for their safety.
As the protesters raged in the streets on Friday, a group surrounded a nearby MTA bus and vandalized it with stickers and anti-cop graffiti.
“F—k NYPD” and “NYPD KKK,” the angry protesters scrawled on the bus with white marker.
“They were banging on the bus, and then a kid with a white mask and a hoodie … used a marker to mark the bus,” one passenger said after getting off.
“I’m not gonna lie, it was scary,” another passenger said.
