While the rest of us working stiffs were just trying to get to the office so we can keep our jobs and pay our ever-mounting bills, a group of privileged radicals were blocking nearly every artery in and out of Manhattan during Monday rush hour.
For a few hours, it was unnecessary havoc in the Big Apple.
Chains of anti-Israel agitators squatted in front of bridges and tunnels bringing traffic to a standstill, trapping commuters.
The chaos caused stonewalled New Yorkers to lean on their horns, creating a city-wide symphony of frustration.
Police arrested 325 demonstrators in the so-called “Shut it down for Palestine” debacle, many of them masked to obscure their faces and fend off personal and professional consequences.
However, once their names were shared, the list unsurprisingly, read like an open casting call for Portlandia, the reality show. Or Dancing With the Democratic Socialists of America.”
A paint-by-numbers band of over-educated members of the lecturing class. Suspects so usual, it’s painfully embarrassing.
There were a Fulbright scholar, Ivy league grads, multiple NYU graduate students, a poet who identifies as nonbinary, a filmmaker for HBO and Netflix — and out-of-town protesters who gave cops home addresses in Georgia and Florida.
But what about a gender and sexuality teacher, who lives in a $1.2m Prospect Heights condo, you ask? Let’s meet Ann Holder, a veteran protester who teaches at Pratt.
Then there’s Eli Coplan, a 31-year-old artist whose work has been shown in the Whitney. His parents have a multimillion dollar real estate portfolio in Colorado and California, and he enjoys dressing as Marie Antoinette, at least according to his Instagram.
For a little Hollywood razzle-dazzle, wealthy Oscar winner Susan Sarandon cheered on her fellow activists.
No cliche left unturned. A perfect protester bingo card.
I guess the union electricians weren’t able to join on account of having to actually show up for work. If they ever made it there.
In other words, the only time these peoples’ hands have gotten dirty was when they plunged them into concrete-filled tires, so cops would have trouble cuffing them.
Naye Idriss, a 25-year-old NYU grad student with a degree from Columbia, was also hauled in. She marked the October 7 massacre by addressing a crowd in Times Square the next day to say it was “the beginning of our victory.”
That was after she used her NYU library mailroom job to write “f–k” over the word Israel on a discarded Israeli mailbag. That’s what an Ivy League degree teaches you.
Ilana Cruger-Zaken of South Salem in Westchester took time from her busy schedule of studying the Judeo-Neo Aramaic dialects of northeastern Kurdistan at NYU, to partake in the mass disruption that was organized by six radical anti-Israel groups.
The scholar of the esoteric bragged on Instagram, “And we’ll do it again.”
Cruger-Zaken is right because the prosecution-averse DA’s office in all likelihood will give them hugs and high fives.
For shutting down the city and endangering everyone within miles, they were issued desk appearance tickets for disorderly conduct charges. Released without bail, and an open invitation to offend over and over.
This is just the latest stunt for these self-absorbed anti-Israel agitators.
They have blocked travelers’ entry to JFK, barricaded the Manhattan Bridge on Thanksgiving weekend and violently attempted to shut down the Rockefeller Center tree lighting.
This time, their aim was to create similar conditions to life in Gaza and make us New Yorkers understand what it’s like to live under a blockade. Of course, it only pissed people.
The lone hero of the day was the man who got out of his car to shove some protesters, screaming that he had to get his daughter in Brooklyn, adding that they were breaking the law.
His act of defiance made us collectively cheer. At least, that trademark gritty New York fighting spirit still lives.
Thankfully it didn’t escalate into real violence. But that’s clearly how this will end: in tears, injury or death. Someone is going to get hurt, and both protesters and authorities will be scratching their heads.
Give these guys something to hang next to their fancy college degrees: a mug shot and a criminal rap sheet.
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