Hundreds of protesters marched through the streets of New York City last month holding signs and crying out chants against a crackdown on fare evasion and excessive policing in the city’s transit system.

The demonstration was the most dramatic escalation of increasing tensions between New Yorkers, the city’s police department and the state-run transportation agency that runs the subways and buses in New York City after a crackdown on fare evasion and increase of police presence in subway stations.

Multiple advocacy groups have said the crackdown targets black and brown populations in the city, communities that have historically had tense relationships with the NYPD and police presence in the city.

Despite months of criticism from various advocacy groups in the city, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which operates the city’s transportation system, has not backed down on its plan to hire 500 police officers and increase policing in the subways and buses.

In response, organizers from November’s protests have promised to continue holding large, disruptive demonstrations until the MTA and New York police department (NYPD) terminates its plan and removes police presence in the stations. Though no dates for more demonstrations have been released, a repeat of the disruptions is all but certain.

Footage from the 22 November protest was shared widely on social media. Videos that have racked up thousands of views show marchers crowding a bridge in Harlem chanting “Whose streets? Our streets!” and protesters running around cars. Multiple videos show clashes between protesters and the police, who ended up arresting 58 people that night. The city temporarily shut down streets and subway stations.

marching to show that the disgusting abuses of the nypd and mta will not be tolerated #FTP pic.twitter.com/tIEEMtbMIp — luis (@qwiktwist) November 23, 2019

Behind the protests is a consortium of about 15 local grassroots organizations called the FTP coalition. They have banded together to conduct disruptive protests – the first of its kind the city has seen since the police presence began to increase.

Organizers say that FTP stands for many things, including “Feed the People” and “For the People”, but stands for “Fuck the Police” when it comes to subway protests.

Social media has been a vital tool for grassroots activists to build support for the movement. Using #DecolonizeThisPlace, the videos and photos are selected and shared by a group called Decolonize This Place, a member of the FTP coalition.

The coalition was created in response to incidents that happened one weekend in October and went viral on social media, including a video that showed police drawing their guns and storming a subway car. The NYPD said a witness informed the police that the young man had a gun, and he fled when police approached him previously.

In case you’re wondering how an arrest in NYC goes down. The guy has made absolutely no indication that he would flee or fight and wasn’t trying to hide.



If you can’t see, the reason everyone moved was because all the police had taken out their guns and aimed at him. pic.twitter.com/dAstrtMntz — Elad Nehorai (@PopChassid) October 25, 2019

The next week, the FTP coalition held their first “emergency action” on 4 November and conducted a mass fare evasion protest, where hundreds of people hopped over the subway turnstiles at a station in Brooklyn. Within days of the protest, videos went viral the arrests of people selling food in the subway stations, increasing the furor that sparked the second “emergency action” in late November.

In response to a request for comment about the protests, an NYPD spokesperson said that “fare evasion is illegal and may subject the evader to arrest, although the majority of fare evaders are issued a transit adjudications bureau summons or criminal court summons”.

Over the summer, the MTA increased police presence in the subways, adding 200 NYPD officers and 300 of its own officers to the subways and buses. The agency cited a myriad of reasons for the increase, including a reported increase in attacks against transit workers and fare evasion, which cost the agency $225m in 2018.

In September, news broke that the MTA will be hiring 500 additional police officers on top of the redeployment to bulk up its current force of more than 750 officers, who are tasked with patrolling the buses, subways and commuter rails throughout the state. The MTA has since said the additional officers will cost $250m over the next four years, but that the officers could pay for themselves by preventing fare evasion.

But boosting the police presence in the subway has struck a sensitive nerve among many New Yorkers.

To New Yorkers, “it looks like we’re going on down this path that led us to mass incarceration, this path that led us to the statistics we see all the time about young black men incarcerated at incredibly high numbers in this country”, said Alexis Perrotta, a lecturer at Baruch College in New York City who focuses on urban transportation and equity.

FTP has begun promoting its third demonstration on social media but declined to give specific information about its plans.

“We understand the escalation of violence that came out of the fare evasion campaign that the MTA put forward … as an attack on the poor in this city, a declaration of war against the poor in this city,” said an FTP organizer who requested anonymity to emphasize the decentralized nature of the coalition. “We will not let up … Disruptions will continue until [NYPD pull] back their dogs.”

