Aliyya Swaby Photo
For four and a half minutes, more than 500 bodies lay shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalk between Yale Law School and the state courthouse Friday afternoon, physically marking the distance between two local symbols of the justice system.
That system has failed, said Yale Law students who organized the die-in protest. After grand juries failed to indict white officers who killed two unarmed black men — Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York — Yale students and local activists marched and “died” to honor black lives and demand justice for police brutality.
Law school students had already been planning a protest, and decided to put it in motion Wednesday night after the grand jury decided not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo for Garner’s murder, said organizer Rakim Brooks. They expected 200 people to join them; instead, more than twice the number showed up, most of them Yale undergraduates, graduate and professional students. (A second New Haven protest was scheduled beginning at 4 p.m. on the Green.)
“As law students, we’re going to be asked to take an oath to protect the law,” said Brooks, a member of the Yale Black Law Students Association. As people studying to participate in the system, they also have to work to change it.
Community organizations such as immigrant rights’ group Unidad Latina en Accion joined in solidarity. Police brutality is one of many “injustices” immigrants face in and out of New Haven, especially those who are undocumented, said Enedelia Cruz, who is from Mexico.
“Estamos en unidad,” she said. “We are in unity.”
Before taking to the streets Friday, organizers took to Facebook and Twitter, to rally followers.
More then 650 people RSVPd to the Facebook event. U.S. Senator Cory Booker retweeted the Twitter announcement to his followers.
Between noon and around 12:25, hundreds filled the street outside of the law school on Wall Street, spilling over and down the street in each direction toward York Street and High Street.
Michael O’Brien, a fellow at the Yale School of Medicine, brought his family to the demonstration. He said die-ins are more effective when people head to the streets and block traffic, which literally “stops the system.”
“This issue gets to the core of what democracy is about,” he said. “The police are functioning in a different justice system than the rest of the people.”
Second-year law student Jordan Bryant took the megaphone to give instructions to the crowd: They would walk single file in silence down the sidewalk on Wall Street toward the courthouse, holding hands. At organizers’ signal, everyone was to lie down where they were for 4.5 minutes, a number representing the four-and-a-half hours Brown was left dead in the street in Ferguson.
The protest would end on the steps of the courthouse itself.
“I’m sick of the lack of surprise we feel when another officer walks away unpunished,” Bryant said. She warned protestors that civil disobedience could get them arrested, though the police had volunteered to cooperate with the demonstration that afternoon.
Bryant walked down the law school steps, grabbed a friend’s hand, and the silent chain began.
The chain blossomed single-file down Wall Street, past the Beinecke Library, gathering a few on the way. It took more than 10 minutes to unfold. Some passersby watched in silence or discussed the spectacle in hushed tones.
At the signal, the protestors “died.”
Others (including law student Tasnim Motala) formed a line and threw up their hands, palms out — “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” — a gesture of solidarity with those killed by the police.
They didn’t stop many cars, but they did impede foot traffic crossing the intersection of Wall and College Streets. Pedestrians stepped past and over protestors to get to their next destinations.
After 4.5 minutes, the march continued down Wall Street, which was barricaded for the march, to the courthouse. Police officers and cars on the street bordered the sidewalk protest.
Protesters (including graduate students Pamela Soto and Lea Hamner, pictured) held signs to honor the black people killed. “We can’t breathe,” read one person’s sign, referencing Garner’s last words as Officer Pantaleo held him in a chokehold.
They formed a mass around the front of the courthouse, overlooked by security officers on the steps and police officers in the street. Court employees pressed their faces to the window and looked down on the demonstration.
“No Justice,” Bryant called out.
“No Peace,” hundreds shouted back. An echo of voices from further down Wall Street after the initial response showed the physical depth of the event.
No one was arrested.
Afterwards Brooks said he was amazed and “pleasantly surprised” by the large number of his classmates at the law school, many of whom are white, that offered support and participated in the die-in. It showed that they “care about issues that may not directly affect them,” he said. “They will never walk in my shoes, but they’re with us.”