We don’t need to curb protests. We have police.
Manhattan: Last week, I testified before the City Council to oppose one of the problematic “buffer zone” bills highlighted in a recent op-ed (“Why we support the City Council’s Safe Access plan,” Feb. 26). These bills would further empower the NYPD to restrict First Amendment-protected speech around schools and houses of worship.
Any bill that seeks to curb the right to peaceful protest without a compelling government interest is unlikely to survive a First Amendment challenge, and our union, which represents faculty and staff at CUNY, particularly opposes Intro 175. It would sweep almost 3,000 educational institutions, including the 25 CUNY colleges, under its purview. The NYPD deputy commissioner for legal affairs repeatedly emphasized during his testimony that the NYPD already has the authority to safeguard New Yorkers at public demonstrations. Police routinely place demonstrators behind steel barriers, enforce free passage in and out of buildings, and ensure the flow of pedestrians around sidewalk protests. Intro 175 is unnecessary to preserve public safety and is clearly intended to create buffer zones free of free speech in the public space in and around schools. Despite an amendment hastily added before the hearing, the bill would interfere with workers’ ability to lawfully picket their employers and would impede teachers and students from voicing their opinions about matters of public concern.
As history and multiple legal settlements have shown, granting additional authority to the NYPD is unwise. Nonviolent protest is a hallmark of a free and democratic society. Nicholas A. Devyatkin, director of legal affairs, CUNY Professional Staff Congress
Selling stolen land
Bronx: Your article on the buffer zone bill (“Worship buffer zones,” Feb. 26) says that the nonprofit holding the event at the Park East Synagogue facilitates North American Jews moving to Israel. It facilitates them moving to the West Bank, in violation of international law. The West Bank is not Israel. W. Twirley
Nothing personal
Providence, R.I.: Re “Daniel Pearl’s life dishonored by UCLA” (op-ed, Feb. 27): Israel is not Daniel Pearl / So protesting its bellicose whirl / Is hardly dishonoring him / When Israel’s onslaught is grim. Felicia Nimue Ackerman
Long, cold slog
Wellfleet, Mass.: February was a long, miserable year. Good riddance. Mike Rice
Always extracting
Brooklyn: Mayor Mamdani is now going to dig through your garbage cans to find that banana peel you didn’t compost so he has an excuse to give you — a taxpaying, hard-working property owner — a ticket to pay for his terrible response to the snowstorms. No one else but the working class has any money or a job to pay for the city’s incompetence. The MTA is in worse shape even after the infusion from the congestion tax on vehicles in the city. Joe Many
Across the divide
Brooklyn: I’m sure many people will criticize Mamdani for working with President Trump (“Mayor’s newsy pitch to Trump,” Feb. 27). How many of them are the same people who said he was too far left to be effective? Mamdani was elected because he is a great communicator, and Trump seems to have been charmed by him. If these two can work together, even while calling each other a fascist and a communist, I don’t care whether it’s a bromance or they’re frenemies. If they can get a housing deal done that benefits New York, let’s all applaud that. Katherine Raymond
Not backing the blue
North Massapequa, L.I.: A snowball fight. That’s how Mamdani describes the attack on the NYPD. The police were called to disperse an out-of-control mob that in turn went after the NYPD, throwing not only snowballs but chunks of ice and other objects. How is this an innocent snowball fight when the officers, if they were to respond in kind, would be the ones in the wrong? Shame on Mamdani for his lack of respect or support for the NYPD. He’s a disgrace of a mayor. Let him go without his police security detail if he feels they’re not needed, and the next time there’s a mob scene, he can go handle it himself. Thank you, men and women of the NYPD. Therese D. Shirreffs
No small thing
Rego Park: I voted for and like our new mayor, but I was disappointed and a bit angry about his opinion on the snowball pelting incident. The cops were there in response to 911 calls about a disorderly mob of adult idiots behaving like unruly 7-year-olds. Instead of dispersing, the crowd pelted officers with snowballs, ice and, according to police union reports, rocks. Multiple officers were hit, with some requiring hospital treatment for face and head injuries. This is a crime and should be prosecuted as such, as Jessica Tisch stated. Mayor Zoh, you are way off on this issue. Richard A. D’Cruz
Sub-snow substrate
Oak Ridge, N.J.: It’s never a good idea to chuck a snowball at a cop, but with 20 inches of snow that fell six days ago, anyone would be hard-pressed to find a rock in the city to make a snowball around and chuck at a cop. Seriously? Jim Heimbuch
Out of proportion
Bronx: To Voicer Atul Karnik: Have you ever been in a snowball fight? I have. I’ve been hit with icy snowballs. Boy, was I mad! You know what I never thought about doing? Going to the hospital and pressing criminal charges. What happened at Washington Square Park was wrong. It was disrespectful. But it was a snowball fight. Get over it. Glenn O’Sullivan
Don’t back down
Manhattan: Sen. Chuck Schumer, do not give in to the GOP on ICE in the current so-called negotiations on funding for its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security. New Yorkers know ICE operates behind masks and without ID or body cameras. We also know ICE routinely breaks the Fourth Amendment, which protects everybody from having their homes broken into and searched without a judicial warrant, and the Fifth, allowing everybody a fair hearing between arrest and an indefinite detention stay or deportation flight. Schumer and his caucus are right to demand that ICE stop its terror tactics as basic conditions for any DHS funding agreement. These are not radical demands. Secret police operating without accountability have no place in America. Schumer, stay strong. Don’t cave to pressure from an administration that has shown contempt for both immigrants and the Constitution that protects all of us. Barbara Connolly
Hollow bluster
Yonkers: On Tuesday night, after not giving in to the reasonable urge to change the channel, I suffered through Trump’s absurdly long, self-serving noise fest falsely called the State of the Union. When it finally ended, I was reminded of the following line from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”: “A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Mark Bloom
