Caught in the Cross Fire of the crown Heights Crisis

COHEN, DEBRA NUSSBAUM

Living two miles from Crown Heights, in an equally racially diverse neighborhood, I couldn't stand to watch the crisis unfold on television while getting phone reports from my in-laws who live...

...Living two miles from Crown Heights, in an equally racially diverse neighborhood, I couldn't stand to watch the crisis unfold on television while getting phone reports from my in-laws who live there...
...He was right...
...I arrived in Crown Heights on August 21 as several thousand Luba-vitchers marched to the precinct police station bearing Yankel Rosen-baum's coffin on their shoulders...
...And the threads of my roles as a Jew, a reporter and a woman, which are bound together in the intricate weave of my identity, were torn apart and stripped away by the passionate players doing battle in the streets of Brooklyn...
...I crossed the street to where dozens of cops and brass waited for miliar place...
...I turned and walked away quickly, my heart racing...
...When I noted that he, too, was wearing press tags and a camera around his neck, he shouted that it wasn't any of my business and to "Get the fuck out of here...
...He stood over me screaming, "Fuck you, white bitch...
...Media hound and black^ racial agitator Al Sharpton scheduled a big rally for the next day, Saturday...
...I thought the question was rhetorical...
...Cops carpeted the area in front of Lubavitcher headquarters...
...But I was dragged into the fray by blacks so desperate to find an...
...A black man came out of the crowd and walked toward me...
...Another guy appeared at his side, and they shouted threats of serious bodily injury if I didn't leave...
...He wanted to talk, he shouted...
...I realized that the shield created by press tags, the invisible cloak that accords reporters permission to go where others can't and makes them almost part of an event, had been ripped away when my harassers singled me out...
...As I tried to stop shaking with fear and anger, I felt ashamed that two idiots had succeeded in intimidating me...
...I had my police-issued press credentials around my neck but turned around so that my place of employment was hidden...
...The two thugs "escorted" me down the block...
...I counted on anonymity in the cover of dozens of journalists...
...he was a colleague...
...Sharpton to arrive...
...I was torn between being annoyed, as a Caught in the Cross Fire of the Crown Heights Crisis As I reached the closest cop, one of the thugs strode toward me, put his hand over my camera and told me again, "Get the fuck out...
...But as the bigger thug ranted on, I realized that they were only watching to see if we were worth covering...
...Only when he waved his press tags did I stop...
...The cops ain't going to do nothing for you, bitch...
...excuse for their rage that they manufactured incendiary rumors to legitimate it...
...In both instances, it was being a Jew that defined me...
...I wasn't Jew enough for Crown Heights' Jews and wasn't reporter enough for Crown Heights' blacks...
...You don't know what's good for you...
...None bothered to come over...
...They" were looking for an excuse to "start," he said...
...As he grabbed my upper arm and began pushing me, I yelled for him to get the hell off, hoping to attract the cops' attention...
...There was a rumor running through the crowd that I was a spy for the Jews, he said...
...Police cars and ambulances now had their windows crisscrossed with tape so that the glass wouldn't shatter on the occupants if they again became targets of rocks and bottles...
...None appeared to have noticed my distress...
...Two days earlier, Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old scholar from Australia, had been murdered by a mob of 20 blacks outraged by the death of Gavin Cato, who had been accidentally struck down by an out-of-con-trol car driven by Lubavitcher Yosef Lifsh...
...Fear and embarrassment rushed through me as I realized that I was no safer now than I had been before...
...When I protested, a cop came over, grabbed my upper arm and walked me away, instructing me not to be "provocative...
...I turned tO the COP standing inches away and asked if I had a right to take a picture...
...I looked over to the cops standing just a few yards away...
...Two days later, the tension in Crown Heights had increased...
...A circle of reporters surrounded us...
...I decided that I would not let their tactics deter me and walked toward the shrine, but across the street, on the side of the cops...
...As I raised my camera to my face, the big guy from my last visit materialized in front of my lens...
...Several blocks away, at the corner of Cato's death, the tension was palpable...
...one of my ha-rassers said...
...I was the only journalist around—the only white and the only white woman, other than some cops...
...None seemed to be paying any attention...
...Some of them were bent over a rectangle of white fabric on the sidewalk, trying to shape gold trimming into a Jewish star as they fashioned a crude Israeli flag...
...Almost immediately the thugs emerged from the crowd, picked me out and started in with their expletives and threats...
...The neighborhood's blacks weren't going to want to talk to a reporter from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency...
...When I asked what they were going to do with it, a young man wearing sunglasses, very tall and broadly built, turned around and said, angrily, that they weren't going to talk to any press...
...They don't give a shit about you...
...All that remained of a yeshivah s van was its firebombed, blackened shell and shattered glass on the ground around it...
...For now, at least, the police presence was limited...
...I thought my colleagues would come to my aid...
...A dozen neighborhood blacks milled around...
...But I felt reassured by the dozens of police across the street from the shrine, wearing riot helmets, hands resting on their nightsticks...
...I had come to record the crisis, to observe it from a certain physical, even emotional, distance...
...I wasn't afraid of another problem since I wouldn't be the only reporter there...
...At the intersection where Cato was killed, a shrine of flowers, candles and his school picture had blossomed...
...It seemed to go on forever...
...He seemed genuinely distressed because, in his view, I was disturbing the cosmic order of the Shabbat universe...
...When I said yes, he looked pained and admonished me not to take photos on Shabbes...
...I returned to Crown Heights Friday afternoon to take photographs of Lubavitchers getting ready for their day of rest...
...And I felt suddenly shut out of the community whose refuge I had sought...
...There had been more rioting, more injuries, and the police presence had multiplied six-fold...
...Cops stood around in small, casual groups, nonchalant in the safety of the sunshine...
...I felt pushed off balance and strangely denuded...
...They were armed and they had me marked...
...I was rushing toward a haven, away from a frightening and unfareporter, that he presumed to tell me how to behave, and respecting, as a Jew, how deeply he believed what he was saying...
...The thugs finally backed off when I promised to leave...
...I left furious that dozens of cops in riot gear were so cowed by these jerks that they were rendered impotent...
...Curious chasidim loitered, waiting to see what would happen...
...Rosenbaum and seven-year-old Cato had been dead for 36 hours, and Crown Heights was deceptively quiet, though it was obvious that there had been two nights of rioting, looting, injury and murder...
...I left for the Crown Heights area near Lubavitcher headquarters, several blocks from the demonstrators...
...DEBRA NUSSBAUM COHEN When I arrived, I joined a large cluster of reporters and photographers...
...The cop told me to leave...
...As I took pictures of some Guardian Angels, a self-appointed group of young men and women— blacks, Hispanics and whites—who move about the city trying to protect neighborhood citizens from crime, a chasid asked if I were Jewish...

Vol. 16 • December 1991 • No. 6


 
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