Scenes from Delaney Hall (1)
It’s been widely reported that the curfew at Delaney Hall was issued on Sunday night, and was to run nightly from 9 pm to 6 am. This photo was taken at 7:10 pm on Monday, June 1st. The State Police have stopped us at the corner of Wilson and Doremus Avenues, about half a mile from Delaney Hall, and ordered us not to proceed. Delaney Hall we’re told, is off-limits until further notice. That’s not the version of events in the media. It’s the version on the ground.

Here, a Delaney Hall protester asks a Newark police officer for the legal basis for the order. “If the curfew runs 9 pm to 6 am, why are we stopped here at 7:10 pm? And if there’s no curfew right now, why is there no freedom of movement?” The officer goes silent and looks down. How would he know what the law says? He’s just following orders.

He wasn’t the only one. Not one “law enforcement officer” we asked was able to identify the legal basis for stopping us, or for erecting barriers to pedestrian traffic. What law is being enforced? “I don’t know,” “You’d have to ask someone higher up,” “I just got here a minute ago.” For all the loose talk about “law and order,” the actual result was a de-legalized space, a Hobbesian State of Nature masquerading as civilization: no known rules, no settled law, no discernible order. Just commands–orders–issued by the people with the firearms, the batons, the tear gas, the pepper spray, and the support of the powerful.

Confronted with this fact, some officers, like this one, either looked away or else fled to a place deep within. Let’s hope this guy can find his conscience in there. Because there’s nowhere to hide.