Protests in the MTA

Clyde Dwyer, ‘21

February 2020

On Friday, January 31, 2020, throngs of New Yorkers flocked to the main hall of Grand Central Terminal. Some wore facemasks or bandanas; some were old, some were young. The reason for this congregation was to send a message to the NYPD and MTA. As the terminal began to fill up with people, noisy chants followed slogans targeting the police or demanding free subway fare. Regular commuters looked on in annoyance and confusion as a mass of protestors began to swell and link arms. 

The demonstration, coined “J31” or “FTP”— for “January 31” or “Fuck the Police ”— is in response to the influx of 500 NYPD officers in the subway system as well as several widely circulated viral videos depicting violence in the train stations over instances of fare evasion. In one video, in October, a teenage boy sat inside a train car as it pulled into the station. When the doors opened several police officers rushed him and threw him to the floor, handcuffing him. Another video from earlier this month shows a white female police officer pushing a young black woman out of a train station and telling her not to return. The girl simply asked if she could go home. Like most viral videos, the circumstances surrounding the incidents are unclear. But they’ve nonetheless contributed to increased tension for many riders.

A defining aspect of being a New Yorker is our relationship to the subway. We can unite in our frustration when it is delayed, relish in our triumph when we make it just as the doors close, and find comfort in a certain seat. We use it to measure distance; “it’s one or two stops away on the ___.” We use it to get to school, get to work and get to one another. But recent events in the subway, have shown that “we” does not extend to everyone. People, who are just as much a New Yorker as anyone else, are excluded from this distinct social ritual and necessary means of transportation because they are unable to afford the daily $5.50 required for a round trip in the subway. 

The subway is a public space by nature. An idealized vision of the subway sees it as an equalizer to the diverse population of New York City. The vision of the subway seen recently on social media reveals it as a hostile environment, particularly for young people of color. The ramped-up police presence in subways and the subsequent demonstration against this have effectively transformed the subway into a political space in a way many of us haven’t seen in our lifetime. 

I confronted the reality of how my experience as a New Yorker on the subway varied from other New Yorkers a few months ago. Earlier this year, I, an evidently white teenager opened the door for a few friends at a subway station after I swiped through. As my friends walked through the door, a group of 3-4 police officers approached me and my friends. What I got was a tepid warning: “Don’t do this again.” What I saw other kids my age receive through viral videos, whose skin color was not the same as mine, was verbal abuse or intimidation at best and physical violence and arrest at worst. 

The initiative by the MTA to increase police presence in the train stations comes as a response to the issue fare evasion in stations, according to the MTA’s budget for 2020. The MTA describes this course of action as: “renewed emphasis [by the MTA] to gain significant control of and reduce fare evasion includes a series of actions designed to deter, rather than fine, fare evaders.” Many protestors feel differently. The group largely responsible for organizing the protest, Instagram account @decolonizethisplace, describe it as an attack on poor people and people of color. On their website, the poster publicizing the event says the addition of 500 police officers to patrol the subway system is “a declaration of war against our communities” and the money used to fund this initiative “should not be invested in the brutalizing and harassing of Black and brown folks.”

There was no shortage of animosity towards the police officers who shepherded the crowd of protestors out of Grand Central and on to a forced march across Midtown. People shouted various chants and cheers such as: “NYPD- how you spell racist” and “No justice, no peace, fuck these racist as police.” Although the protest’s main focus was police brutality in the subway system, others advocated for a fully accessible subway system and others for the abolition of prisons and borders.

The emergence of such a movement is not spontaneous or random. The Instagram account “@decolonizethisplace” has been organizing this protest since late December and has spread awareness through its popular Instagram page as well as signs, and posters hung around the city in anticipation of the event.

Many see the increased police presence as an attack on lower-income and minority train riders. Even before the MTA put this new initiative in place, of those arrested for fare evasion “an overwhelming 90 percent of them [were] black or Hispanic.” Often the people being stopped or turned away are those just trying to get to work. 

Fare evasion, in the scope of financial issues facing the MTA, is a marginal one. Within their yearly $17 billion budget, fare evasion costs them a projected $300 million. That projection is a mere 1.75% of their total budget. The allocation of resources towards additional law enforcement in train stations seems to point the MTA attempting to publicize their efforts towards positive change.

But the events that unfolded on January 31 showed the inverse effect of the MTA attempting to create what they see as a safer system. The typical busyness of rush hour on a Friday was exacerbated by the chanting crowd, as it shut down multiple intersections across 42nd street. Construction workers and various businesswomen and men looked on, their cellphones poised to capture the chaos. Many people on the street, whose daily routine was interfered with by this protest did not seem to know what it was that was being protested. A newsstand owner looked on in awe as a chorus of: “F the police, f the police!” passed his place of his business. The owner, who declined to give his name, expressed encouragement towards the movement whilst admitting he had no idea what was going on.

In an interview in January 2020 when discussing fare evasion, Mayor De Blasio said “We want to make sure everything is fair.”

In response to the protests that transpired on January 31 and the protestors’ vandalism, Mayor De Blasio said “What they did was absolutely inappropriate. I think a lot of people were certainly repulsed. I was one of them.”