NEW YORK - Thousands of protesters from civil rights groups walked down Fifth Avenue in silence Sunday, marching in defiance of “stop-and-frisk’’ tactics employed by New York City police.
The quiet was interrupted only by the tapping of feet on the pavement and birds chirping as protesters strode along Central Park from Harlem to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s town house on the Upper East Side.
For almost 30 city blocks, the march moved down Fifth slowly and silently. Then, as they passed Bloomberg’s home, the crowd erupted in protest chants. The house on East 79th Street, off Fifth, was blocked by police barricades.
“We’ve got to fight back, we can’t be silent!’’ a group of activists shouted as the march wound down, with a lineup of buses waiting to take protesters away....
Tensions rose between police officers and a group of protesters who tried to keep walking down Fifth Avenue below East 77th Street.
Police officers on scooters lined both sides of the avenue and officers on foot formed a line to keep people on the sidewalk. Several scuffles broke out between screaming protesters and officers who pushed them behind barricades on the sidewalk.
One woman was seen wrestling with police officers before being arrested. Police officers were seen making a handful of arrests.
The practice of silent marches dates to 1917, when the NAACP led a protest through New York against lynchings and segregation in the United States.
“We are black, white, Asian, LGBT, straight, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian,’’ New York City Council member Jumaane Williams said before the march began, standing alongside American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. “Mayor Bloomberg has been our great uniter. We’ve been screaming loudly, and he hasn’t heard us, but hopefully he’ll hear the deafening silence.’’
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