Freelance videographer Dan LaDue shot video and posted to @newyorkcity on Instagram
1 June 2020, New York City, USA
These are fucking people who live in public housing. And you just made a fucking melee.
You took down bus routes. There are people who live in this neighbourhood who have to go back uptown to work.
And you are here, profiting off our fucking pain.
So you fucking protestors, every single last one of you. You think about what it’s like to be a black woman in this fucking neighbourhood, who lives with people public housing, who now has fucking shit to walk through.
Who bag your groceries, who drop off your food, who defend you, who go uptown to a fucking hospital, to serve his community.
So if you’re out here, be fucking responsible.
Have a fucking plan .
You can protest all you want but the shit I just saw take place, I know there are people out here, homeless people who fucking rely on those banks to charge their phones. And you think it’s okay to take down a neighborhood. You don’t see corporations here. There are human beings that live in this goddamn neighborhood.
You do this shit in Harlem, you do this shit in Brooklyn.
And I swear on everything. These people in this neighbourhood deserve better. And I’m not talking about the gentrification, I’m not talking about the fucking students who come here and pay cash to go to NYU,.
I am talking about the people who go to a methadone clinic down the goddamn street.
And you fucking think this is a protest?
I gave my fucking blood sweat and tears for this country. I served this country for ten goddamn years. So when you think about this anger and this fucking rage, ‘cause there is a way to get answers.
Every single last one of you better be fucking registered to vote. Every single last one of you.
Yes ma’am.
We are.
So do me favour, for every single last person out here protesting, remember, there’s three homeless men who rely on that as a charging station. And what, what … will it even work now?
For the sake of what, so you can go back home to your fucking comforts. Sit in your house and think that you did some fucking work today?
There are people out here who work in these bodegas. Who are security officers. Who are maybe not descendants of slavery, but who came over here as immigrants to do their jobs. And you’ve created an unsafe, goddamned environment!
And I am tired of it!
I don’t care how you decide to organise and protest, but you don’t fucking riot.
You don’t burn crap in my goddamned neighbourhood.
I am a resident here, and you will fucking realise this resident doesn’t look like any of you.
‘Cause she is black. She has a fucking right to be mad! But when you come in here with your fucking privilege, and you take down resources that my community needs, these houses, these buildings are dilapidated, because of fucking - we don’t have patrons here!
There are immigrants who fucking built a fucking eyebrow threading studio, and we got spray paint on their crap.
So you wanna fucking do something? Make sure you’re registered to vote. Don’t start another goddamned fire, and you better pass it on to all your fucking friends.
You stay out of our fucking neighbourhoods, and you take this shit, to the corporations. You take it to Washington!
But you don’t fucking come on this block, period.
This is a fucking neighbourhood, with immigrants. And you can treat it as such.