The scene was June 2004, the location was NYC and a low key battle for freedom was about to explode from a hundred camera lenses.
Post 9/11 paranoia had consumed the city. Every month seemed to bring new surveillance and conspiracy theory based security theater. Photographers, regardless of age or skin color, were being stopped and questioned by cops (and wanna-be cops) if they happened to be near a bridge or a tunnel or a hot dog stand or whatever. Cops had an extremely misguided notion that anyone with a camera was now a terrorist. They did not care that by attempting to infringe upon our first amendment rights, they were literally doing Bin Laden’s work. He wanted the United States to implode in on itself. He was probably cheering on how absolute paranoid law enforcement had become, and how the patriot act was pushed through curtailing everyone’s freedoms. The MTA, an agency run by political appointees, took their paranoia one step further and proposed banning all photography within the NYC subway system.
Flat out enraged by this ridiculous proposal, I organized dozens of explorers, street photogs and photo journalist for a day of protest. After being pushed around for nearly three years we came together and pushed back. It was the NYC photographer crossover event of the decade. It was novel, unique and at the time, extremely bold. No one saw it coming.
We made an absolutely mockery of the MTA, riding around photographing each other and literally scaring some cops away. If there is one thing a bully doesn’t like, it’s a crowd with cameras. I’ll never forget the look on that pair of cops faces in Union Square, as they turned and ran up the stairs pretending a nefarious flash mob had not materialized right before their eyes. We ended the day outside MTA headquarters, standing behind a massive America flag (there is a great untold story for how I came to have that flag that day, and how I was nearly arrested the night before, but that’s a story for a whole other time).
Our antics made every newspaper in town and then some. The story ran international, from here to Poland to Australia and back. Within days even that pencil-neck geek Mayor Bloomberg sided with us.
Everyone who joined and helped make it happen (too many for me to list really) took a stand for all New Yorkers that day. In retrospect it’s almost surreal that this had to happen. When I tell younger folks about it, it’s so obscure they can’t believe it. They forget that smart phones didn’t get popular until 4 years after this protest, and how very few people carried cameras every day. Google street views also did not exist, and satellite map views were not that great either.
A year later, the MTA quietly announced there would be no ban. They insisted from the outset that it was the NYPD’s idea and that they were just going along with it (like the good bootlickers they are). Their stupid unconstitutional idea died with a whimper. Over the coming few years the cops scaled back their bullshit, getting hit with a few lawsuits on the way… and then smart phones exploded onto the scene. Our 2004 squad of 100 would no doubt be backed by a legion of 1,000,000+ smart phone camera carrying anti-tyranny protesters if they ever try that shit again.
I always look back at what transpired and can’t help but wonder how many otherwise innocent people, especially POCs, would have been targeted and victimized by cops under that photo ban. How many young transit nerds, budding photographers and tourists would have been given fines, criminal records, beat up by cops or worse? All for the hideous crime of… photography? Make no mistake they were going to do it, and no one was going to stop them. It would have been like selling loosies, and we all know what happened when cops enforced that nonsensical law. Post 9/11 people just assumed that’s how it had to be: more cops doing random illegal searches, random stops and bag searches of people committing no crime, and overall less freedoms in exchange for safety. Such fools deserve neither. It was unreal, so we made sure it didn’t become real. I was ready to battle that one all the way through the courts if needed, but it never came to it. We had knocked the wind out of their paranoid sails.
Sometimes you gotta fight like a title holder. You gotta go pound for pound and round for round… If the system is trying to pull off some repressive bullshit, you’ve got to fight it. You gotta rally whatever troops you can and push back as hard as you can. Sometimes you blindside and KO their ass like we did. Often the struggle is longer, and winning isn’t guaranteed. On some level tho, If you are not fighting you are not living, and they’ll grind you away however they can. Take the fight to them. Hit then in unexpected ways. Mock their tyranny relentlessly. For we are legion. We run this shit. Not them. Not now, not ever.
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