PICTURES: AT COURT WITH COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY AND CUNY PROTESTERS
MARATHON ARRAIGNMENTS END FOR PROTESTERS ARRESTED AT COLUMBIA, CUNY. BATTLE WITH POLICE AT CUNY REVEALED.
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Reporting & Photographs by JB Nicholas.
The last of the 282 people arrested protesting for Palestine at Columbia University and CUNY Harlem were released shortly before 5:00 on Thursday.
All went home without bail and were told to return to court at a later date.
The arrests came after students at both schools occupied campus buildings to protest against Israel's on-going mass-killing of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, police and prosecutors alleged.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) calls Israel's mass-killing of Palestinians "ethnic cleansing."
192 of those arrested were given Desk Appearance Tickets or summonses after being briefly detained Tuesday evening. 74 were "put through the system" in an extraordinary, marathon session of arraignments that lasted almost 24-hours.
To speed things up, some of the arraignments were held in groups of twos and threes—a rarely-used practice in New York City.
Before the court opened for business Wednesday evening dozens of friends, family members and comrades flooded the first-floor hallway outside the two courtrooms where the majority of arraignments in Manhattan are held.
They gathered around the clipboard where court clerks post paper sheets bearing lists of names of people waiting to be arraigned.
Arraignments are the first time a judge gets involved in the typical criminal case. Judges at arraignments perform two important functions. They first determine whether sufficient evidence exists to allow the case to go forward. If there is, they decide whether a defendant should be held or released before trial.
Kai Russo, 27, was the first to be arraigned. Russo allegedly fought police outside CUNY when they moved in to evict protesters who set camp there last Thursday, Apr. 25. Russo was charged with felony assault, resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration (affectionately called "contempt of cop" by defense lawyers) and what court records call "fight/violent behavior."
Russo's alleged actions were part of an occupation of a CUNY Harlem building by at least 22 protesters. They locked themselves inside, barricaded entrances and threw objects at police including a garbage can and a water bottle. One officer was hit with a keyboard, police and prosecutors alleged.
22 were charged with third degree burglary for allegedly breaking into and occupying the building. Counting Russo, five more were charged with assault on police clearing the occupation. They ranged in age from 23 to 41.
Most of the arrested protesters relied on free legal services provided by the City, but Russo had a privately-retained attorney. That fact may explain why she was the first to be arraigned. Private lawyers can push court personnel to speed things up for their clients, if they're nice or likable enough.
Russo is no stranger to the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse.
They were arrested for allegedly beating up a self-proclaimed citizen journalist outside a talk by a leader of the Proud Boys at the Metropolitan Republican Club Oct. 12, 2018.
Court records don't indicate what happened to the charge, but the alleged "victim," Paul Miller, was a right-wing Fascist who called for a race war. He's currently serving 41 months in federal prison for unlawfully possessing firearms and ammunition.
Some defendants celebrate their first moments of freedom in the hallways of the courthouse, Russo covered their face and fled.
Meanwhile at Columbia, 46 people were arrested inside Hamilton Hall, prosecutors and police said. These 46, like the CUNY protesters, were occupying to protest the schools' financial investments in Israel and demand it divest—a demand the school President, Nemat Shafik, refused. All 46 were charged with criminal trespassing in the third degree.
"This remains an active and ongoing investigation and as we gather more evidence, we will be able to make a clearer determination about how we will ultimately proceed with these cases," Doug Cohen, Press Secretary for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, said in an emailed statement.
"For all these reasons," the statement said, prosecutors asked in all 74 cases "for an adjournment date of three weeks as we continue to investigate."
Defense lawyers exposed a potential weakness in the cases against about less than a dozen Columbia protesters.
In these cases, the paperwork submitted by police to support the charge alleged only that the defendants were at the corner of 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. They did not allege the defendants were actually inside Hamilton Hall, defense lawyers said.
At least two judges appeared to agree, but let the cases go forward anyway—apparently because the prosecution asked for an investigative adjournment.
In the remainder of the Columbia cases, the allegations were supported by an affidavit of Columbia University's Chief Operating Office Cas Holloway. Holloway's affidavit alleges those defendants were actually inside Hamilton Hall.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office did not respond to a request for the Holloway affidavit in time for publication.
All of the protesters and their lawyers refused to speak to the press. None of the protesters made any defiant statements or condemned the treatment they'd just received.
Another unusual aspect to the proceedings was the notices given the defendants by prosecutors.
New York law requires defendants be given notice of alleged "confessions" they made to police that the prosecution may decide to use against them at trial.
"Free Palestine!" was one statement prosecutors said they may want to use against Sebastian Gomez, 22, Tiffany Yang, 31, and Elizabeth Reade, 37. Other variations used by other defendants included "Free Free Palestine!,""NYPD KKK Free Palestine!" and "Fuck you! Fuck the police!"
Because protesters stayed mum, it created the odd spectacle of only prosecutors declaring "Free Palestine!" in court.
One protester was charged with burning an Israeli flag—even though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled burning flags in protest is symbolic speech protected by the Constitution.
Among the anomalies was a mystery: a protester identified only as "John Doe."
Sometimes people accused of crimes do not immediately identify themselves. That results in them being put into official computer systems as "John Doe." Other times police enter defendants into computer systems as "John Doe" to hide them from family and friends looking for them. In either case, if you have to call police and ask if so-and-so has been arrested, and they're in the system as John Doe, you won't find them.
In order to be processed for arraignment, arrestees must submit to fingerprinting so their identities are discovered before they are brought into a courtroom for their arraignment—where by practice they're identified in open court orally by court officers, but usually only by a last name.
John Doe turned out to be "Alvarez"—dressed in an insulated, black onesie.
While the arrests at Columbia garnered attention around the globe, press presence was sparse Wednesday night.
In addition to The Free Lance, Al-Jazeera, The Guardian, news photographer Angel Zayas and the Columbia University student radio station, WCKR 89.9, were there.
Christopher Hedges, a legendary New York Times war reporter who was actually held hostage by militants in Iraq for a week during the Gulf War, also swung through for night court on Wednesday. He was observed casually chatting with protesters in the hallway, showing them something on his mobile phone.
When asked why he'd come, he said he was "curious" how the protesters would be treated.
Courtney McDuffie, a 32-year-old Washington Heights resident who was not part of the protests, answered that question.
McDuffie was arrested for something else, and met them in one of the several large holding cells—called "bullpens"—that sit beneath the courtrooms in the basement of the Manhattan Criminal Court building. Having been arrested several times in the past, McDuffie said he was an "expert" on jails in New York City.
"They were getting treated horrible," McDuffie said. "They were getting talked to all kinds of ways."
One man, he said, was denied the right to pray.
"He was asking for them to cuffs off, but they wouldn't"—even though they were already in a jail cell.
But later Wednesday night, the Court stayed open later than usual to get as many of the protesters home as possible before court closed for the night. Anyone not making the cut-off has to sleep the night on a bench in the bullpens or, when the benches get full, on the floor. Guards used to hand out newspapers to prisoners to sleep on, but since most people get their news from the Internet these days there's less newspapers in the bullpens to hand out.
Manhattan night court usually closes at 1:00 am, but that night the court stayed until about 1:30 pm.
At first, protesters emerged from the courtrooms into the hallway smiling and happy to meet supporters gathered there. One man was so overcome with joy he spread his arms and celebrated freedom by prostrating himself on the ground. Many emerged wearing Columbia University sweaters and broad smiles.
But the mood swung Wednesday night as their publicly-funded lawyers urged them to stay silent and not talk to the press.
By the end of the night, instead of joyous scenes of reunion after unjust separation, protesters covered their faces and scurried out of court as if they'd done something wrong.
The next day it was even worse, with protesters covering news photographers' lenses with headscarfs and their hands—in front of court officers in a public courthouse. This even after they surrounded released comrades with additional head scarfs.
Arguments broke out between protesters and news photographers—who have had to fight for their First Amendment rights to photograph even in public places for a century.
Court got off to a slow start on Thursday morning, but made up for it by sometimes hearing two or three cases at a time. While court personnel waited, they bantered about the extraordinary current events gripping the Nation and, in particular, the Manhattan Criminal Court Building.
Former Pres. Donald Trump was being tried upstairs—the first president ever to be put on trial for alleged crimes. Disgraced movie producer and Me Too poster child Harvey Weinstein was in court for a new trial—fresh off his successful appeal that reversed his 2020 rape conviction. And 74 people, half college kids, were being arraigned after a historic occupation of a building at one of America's most prestigious colleges—part of a wave of pro-Palestinian protests sweeping the country.
John Boyle—one of the alleged CUNY occupiers—was the last to be arraigned. The strapping Boyle bolted from the courthouse, and joined comrades in the park across the street to enjoy what was left of a perfect, warm spring day under a cloudless sky.
There, a group of around 100 broke up into different groups, eating, drinking and talking—indifferent to the undercover police officers or spies surveilling the gathering from the edges of the park.
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