Unrest Continues in Tompkins Square Park
Echoing last summer's scorching August unrest, media attention is once again intensely focused on Tompkins Square Park in the East Village, as riot police and park officials continue to engage in a tug-of-war with the homeless and their supporters. Last year, a demonstration against a park curfew ended in a full-scale riot that left scores injured, as journalists captured police beating demonstrators on video tape.
Parks Department officials said that the trouble again began to brew early in June of this summer when a group of homeless living in Tompkins Square erected shelters in the south and west areas of the park. Reacting to this shantytown, and to others like it around the city, the Mayor's office put into effect a new city law which prohibits building structures in city parks. On July 4th [1989], approximately 5,000 people gathered in Washington Square Park, where the Homeless Clients Advisory Committee planned to burn the American flag to protest the plight of homeless people. This group clashed with a gang of skinheads who called the group "faggots and Communists" and chanted "burn the flag and we'll burn a fag." The police shut down the park at 6 p.m. and the two groups marched to Tompkins Square Park where they were peacefully dispersed. En route, however, skinheads reportedly trashed the offices of the Anarchist Switchboard on 9th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues.
On Wednesday night, July 5th [1989], in a torrential rainstorm, 10 policemen were hurt and 31 people were arrested as 100 police in riot gear swarmed Tompkins Square Park and razed the tattered village of wooden structures and cloth tents that Deputy Parks Commissioner Alan Moss called a "cover for drug dealing and prostitution." The strategic maneuver was extremely well planned, and relied heavily on plainclothed troops. "The police have more savvy, which is scary," protester Garance Ruta told OutWeek. "They shine spotlights into the eyes of the crowd, then two plainclothes cops grab someone and drag them behind the police line where they instantly disappear. No one can see who was arrested, who arrested them or what is happening to them next."
On Thursday, July 6th [1989] the riot police gathered again and swept the park of the structures that had been rebuilt. 200 to 300 angry and confused people were displaced from the area as parks workers tossed unattended possessions into garbage trucks. By Saturday, July 8th, in a seemingly unending circle of tear down, rebuild, tear down, tents once again bloomed in the park. Early in the afternoon, a group of 100 protesters gathered in front of the East Fifth Street police station before moving on to Tompkins Square. Then, shortly after 6:30 p.m., riot police and park workers appeared and pulled down the re-erected tents. Protesters scurried to erect several more tents which, at 9:00 p.m., officials promptly removed.
By Sunday, July 9th, the tents had reappeared. At 9:00 a.m., several dozen pol ice and park rangers shrieked a wake-up call on whistles rousing the 50 or so people sleeping in the park, and quickly removed their temporary structures. The police evacuated the park at 11:00 a.m. and soon thereafter, the structures reappeared. "We will keep it up ...until the message is out that you can't build structures in the park," said Deputy Chief Charles Reuther of Patrol Borough Manhattan South. Keith Thompson, a 32-year-old homeless man and park resident for the past year said, "It doesn't matter if they keep taking them down. We're just going to keep rebuilding them."
— Keith Miller, OutWeek Magazine No. 5, July 24, 1989, p. 24.
