More than a thousand people swarmed Grand Central Terminal and the city’s subways on Friday night to demand an end to overpolicing of the transit system. The protesters propped open emergency doors, wrote on walls, defaced fareboxes, capping off a day of banner-drops, speak-outs, and other actions designed to force the state to radically change how they administer transit in New York City.

The demonstrators called for free public transit, an end to official harassment of the homeless, vendors, and musicians in the subways, and full accessibility for people of all physical ability throughout the transit system.

Friday night’s actions were the third in a series of “FTP” mass demonstrations. The actions, which began in reaction to a spate of viral videos showing police handcuffing churro vendors and pulling guns on young people suspected of hopping turnstiles, have been called for by a coalition of groups including Decolonize This Space, Why Accountability and Take Back the Bronx.

Around a month ago, the MTA board, led by appointees of Governor Andrew Cuomo, voted to install 500 new MTA police officers in the transit system at a cost of $249 million over the next four years. The decision was made despite data showing that low level crime had not appreciably increased in the subways (major crimes have actually decreased) and comes as the MTA is facing down a billion-dollar budget deficit.

Governor Cuomo has invoked “quality of life issues” for subway riders riders caused by the homeless and the “dangerously mentally ill” as reasons for hiring the police, but both outreach workers and NYPD officers have spoken out against the state’s approach. Mayor Bill de Blasio has mostly sought to avoid the conversation about the police hires. In January, New York Attorney General Tish James launched an investigation into whether the NYPD’s fare-evasion enforcement is racially targeted, calling the evidence “deeply troubling"—between October 2017 and June 2019, black and Hispanic New Yorkers represented almost 70 percent of all civil summonses and nearly 90 percent of arrests for fare evasion on the subway system.

Thirteen people were arrested during Friday night’s demonstrations, and 11 were given criminal summonses, according to the NYPD (organizers of the protest said that 45 people were arrested). The NYPD said that of the arrests, five were based on charges of criminal mischief, five on the obstruction of government administration, one for disorderly conduct, one for assault, and one arrest was made based on a charge of resisting arrest. A police spokesperson said the department was unaware of any injuries resulting from the protests.

The gathering on the main floor of Grand Central Terminal at 5 p.m. on a Friday was calculated to produce maximum disorder for the rush hour commute. Protesters filled most of the space, swirling slowly counterclockwise around the information booth and chanting, “From the A to the Z, transit should be free!” Also on hand were hundreds of police of every variety: the MTA’s Hybrid Threat Unit, plastic handcuffs dangling from their belts; up-armored and bearded operator-types wearing Department of Homeland Security insignia; the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group, its Disorder Control Unit, and officers with Counterterrorism emblazoned across their backs.

From the beginning, the action was marked by bursts of conflict as police raced through the crowd to arrest people. At 5:09, officers swarmed a pair of people dressed as clowns who were attempting to set up a badminton game, complete with net and racquets, in the middle of the floor, dragging them off to be arrested.

One group exited the terminal, streaming west on 42nd Street, flanked by police on scooters and bicycles, before ducking into the 6th Avenue Subway stop. “Fuck the pigs, fuck MTA! Hop the trains, make Wall Street pay!” they chanted, their voices echoing against the tiled tunnels alongside the fervent testimony of a street preacher from the New Covenant Church. “Repent of your sins!” the preacher urged the protesters. “Repent of your rebellion! Repent of your anarchy! Jesus Christ is the king of kings!”

"A protester may have drawn something on the Cartier window then a plainclothes policeman jumped out of the crowd of protesters and attacked and tackled her and dragged her away and then a row of about 50 police attacked all the protesters," witness Brandon Cuicchi told us.

(That’s from an hour ago.) Protesters now on the move. Cops just arrested some who apparently wrote FTP on a Cartier window — spotted by a plainclothes officer in the crowd pic.twitter.com/cH4B0sgYRE — Jake Offenhartz (@jangelooff) January 31, 2020

Switching to the A train, the group disembarked at the Nostrand station and filed in to Restoration Plaza in Bedford-Stuyvesant, followed in short order by a contingent of SRG and Counterterrorism police. After several more arrests, most of the police waited to the side of the plaza, while a few senior officers planted themselves squarely in the middle, surrounded by jeering protesters chanting, “We are peaceful, what the fuck are you?”

“What the police are doing, it’s not ok,” Shelynne Rodriguez, an organizer with Take Back the Bronx, told the crowd. “We will continue to gather here, despite their aggression.”

Amin Hussain, an organizer with Decolonize This Place, addressed the officers directly. “Why are you here?” he asked, as the officers stood their ground and consulted with their radios. “What do you want? This is public space. We’re the public. And we’re telling you: Leave.”

Yesterday’s action gained a higher profile than it might otherwise have after Donald Trump Jr. amplified a tweet from right-wing media figure Andy Ngo about the actions. Police unions also weighed in. The Patrolman’s Benevolent Association tweeted that the FTP actions constitute the “true endgame of the anti-police movement, an end of all policing & destruction of public order.” The Sergeant’s Benevolent Association called the actions the work of a “domestic terrorist group” composed of “non-productive human beings” and amplified a message calling for the “men in blue” to “beat down these anti-American scum.”

NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan released a video statement predicting that protesters would be “attempting to physically assault our officers.”

NBC 4 New York ran a story Thursday night that appeared to rely solely on police union officials and a leaked NYPD memo, noting that the “threat… even calls for violence against the police.” John Durso, a spokesman for the station, declined to answer questions about what evidence supported this characterization, or whether the station had made any effort to contact FTP organizers in reporting the story. “We stand by our reporting,” Durso said in an email.

When the news media wasn’t hyping imminent physical violence, its members were certainly generally skeptical of the protesters’ penchant for vandalism and organized fare-beating. FTP organizers, say they’re untroubled by the disapproval of the news media, public officials, and anyone else who doesn’t get what they’re up to. FTP isn’t for those people, they said, and its effectiveness isn’t premised on winning over any part of the city’s power structure.

“This is about class war,” Rodriguez said. “If people living on 86th Street don’t like it, that’s all right. Those people eat well because we don’t. Those people are our landlords and our bosses. This is for the black and brown and indigenous people who are being criminalized in the subways as part of a program of gentrification, cleansing this city of the riffraff. That’s who we’re appealing to. And they’re showing up.”

“We talk a lot about ‘becoming ungovernable,’” Hussain said. “We’re not going to be reasonable, we’re going to be principled, and say ‘this must end.’ We’re going to take risks to take a stand. And that energy is coming from the street. You look at how young the kids in this movement are, they know what’s up. They don’t need us to tell them something’s really wrong here.”

Hussain continued, “So this movement is about creating a space for people to resist in their own ways, and to create a pressure completely outside the power structure that forces that structure, if it wants to stay at the center of the conversation, to make concessions. But we’re not trying to cooperate with non-profit advocacy groups or liberal politicians. If the political system isn’t working, why would you appeal to continue to appeal to that structure?”

Know Your Rights training happening in the Cranberry Tube pic.twitter.com/rr71ULzECy — Jake Offenhartz (@jangelooff) January 31, 2020

On an A-train car from Brooklyn to lower Manhattan last night, this theory of change was unconvincing to at least one person. The car was packed with FTP protesters in their teens and twenties, returning from Bed-Stuy to One Police Plaza to support the people arrested in the course of the day’s actions, and they were spending the ride tagging up the car with Sharpies and glitter-pens: “Fuck the Police.” “Free MTA.” “Cops out of the subway.”

An older man with a Caribbean accent was horrified. “Stop it at once,” he ordered the kids. “This is vandalism! Where are your parents?” The man was met with a hail of jeers from throughout the car, but he was undaunted. “This is not how you protest,” he said. “If you want to make a change, you go to City Hall. You need to educate yourselves.”

A young black woman standing next to the man wasn’t having it. “Everyone here is doing this, taking risks, because the police are targeting and killing people who look like you,” she said. “You should be supporting them, not criticizing them.”

“It’s not a color thing,” said the man, who identified himself as a banker. “This subway is for all of us. Stop it or I’m going to call the police on you at the next station.”

When the train pulled into Jay-Street Metro Tech, the man beckoned to police officers on the platform. “Look at this!” he said to them, gesturing at the marked-up car. “This is disobedience! Are you watching this?” The police shuffled and eyed the car full of rambunctious youth warily, clearly unenthused at the prospect of wading into the full car. “You should do something about this!” the man insisted. But the car doors slid closed, and the train began to move, as the exultant protesters banged on the windows. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, man,” a young black man told the banker. “They don’t give a fuck about you.”

Additional reporting from Jake Offenhartz.