New York city Past the Curfew
An unprecedented 8 pm curfew has been implemented in New York City this week by mayor Bill De Blasio in response to the looting and vandalism that occurred on the sidelines of Black Lives Matter protests Sunday night. Even though it has been evident that the looting has no direct link to the organized protests, which were by an overwhelming nonviolent, the mayor of the biggest city in the United States decided to paralyze the city, already crippled by the coronavirus lockdown.
As a result of that, NYPD runs the city every evening after 8. The remnants of life and color of New York have been washed away by the blue and red sirens. The streets have been emptied of its inhabitants and the only people who are legally allowed to be out are the police themselves, essential workers, and the homeless. There are exceptions for people who need to walk their dogs or people who require medical assistance. The curfew gives the police unimaginable power to arrest anyone that declines to comply with the curfew, which widely has been used to arrest protesters that have declined to cease their activity after 8 pm.
The combination of these circumstances and fear of more violence and aggression created an atmosphere that turned New York into something that it isn’t used to: a virtually empty city stripped of the freedoms that it has championed, desaturated from its diversity in expression, motion, and brightness. It is shut down, not by violence but by toothless governing and inability to properly police its citizens.