Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

“They Are Cracking Down Like This Because They Are Scared of the Movement”: Doctor Arrested by NYPD Speaks Out

Left Voice editor, doctor, and street medic Mike Pappas was arrested for violating curfew on Thursday night while marching against police brutality. He made this video at 2am Friday morning after he was released.

Mike Pappas

June 6, 2020
Facebook Twitter Share
PH: Luigi Morris/Left Voice

Mike Pappas is a frontline doctor and a reporter for Left Voice. On Thursday night, Mike was arrested by the NYPD while he was participating in the Black Lives Matter protest in the South Bronx. He was providing medical care to people injured with a group of his coworkers. Like thousands of other people in New York, he has been charged for breaking the curfew that De Blasio imposed to crush dissent. We must fight back these attacks from the state against the most basic democratic rights. 

Mike here, Physician, health care   worker, member of Left Voice just got out of the 40th precinct behind me. 

I was arrested today while acting as a medic at a protest in the Bronx with, Take Back the Bronx. I was just kept with up to 17 other people, at one point in an 8 by 10 cell, none of which had masks on. The police came in laughing at us every time we said ‘maybe we need masks while we are in here’. It was about 85 degrees in that cell was 17 people in there. None of the police had masks on, so, you know, when we brought that up they said, “Maybe you shouldn’t have been out on the street protesting”. Nobody would have to be out on the street protesting, if it weren’t for the racist ass system that is policing in the United States.

Ultimately what’s gonna happen is, this type of shit is gonna increase the spread of coronavirus and more people even die from this and, you know who’s gonna fucking have blood in their hands for that? It’s gonna be democrats, like Cuomo and De Blasio. With all their “vote them out, vote them blue” and all that shit, there’s no voting them out, there´s no voting blue. The system itself is completely corrupt, we need to destroy the entire system, the capitalist economic system is dependent on people like those people behind me upholding this type of system.

Some of the police when we were critiquing what we were doing were saying, “you know, not all the police are bad”, I’m sorry?! The entire system of policing is completely corrupt, it’s a completely racist system based on slave patrols and all police are bad. 

The NYPD’s budget should be defunded to zero. To zero. We don’t need any of them, we need to be out in the streets and people need to keep mobilizing. Cracking down like this is just showing that they are scared of this movement and we just need to make sure that this movement grows. Keep it up everybody!

https://www.facebook.com/LeftVoice.org/videos/562188101401204/

Facebook Twitter Share

Mike Pappas

Mike is an activist and medical doctor working in New York City.

Labor Movement

Three tables full of food, with signs hung above them. One says "The People's Pantry: FREE FOOD." Banners hung from the tables say "Free CUNY" and "Cop Free School Zone"

CUNY Administration Cracks Down on Student and Worker-Run Food Pantry

Students and workers opened "The People's Pantry" seven weeks ago as part of a broader anti-austerity campaign at CUNY, leading to several direct confrontations with the administration.

Olivia Wood

March 19, 2023

Temple’s Grad Worker Strike Ends with Important Victories 

The last report on the strike from a union teacher at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Jason Koslowski

March 17, 2023

Teachers and Education Workers Set to Strike! Tens of Thousands Rally in Los Angeles 

A three day strike was announced by two education unions at a rally attended by tens of thousands of members. The workers are calling for increased wages, reduced class size, and an end to harassment by their employers.

Julia Wallace

March 17, 2023
A sign drawn on a small whiteboard, in trans pride colors. Text: "CUNY Graduate Center and Professional Schools Workers for Trans Rights" Beneath the text is a chain of 9 smiling stick figures in different colors, all holding hands

CUNY Union Chapter Unanimously Passes Resolution in Support of Trans Rights

The Graduate Center chapter of PSC-CUNY, the faculty, staff, and graduate worker union of the City University of New York, passed a resolution pledging support to all workers fighting the anti-trans bills nationwide.

Olivia Wood

March 12, 2023

MOST RECENT

“We Deserve a Living Wage:” on the Limits of the New Temple Grad Worker Union Contract 

A graduate worker at Temple reflects on the limits and strengths of the new contract won in the recent strike.

Femicide: The Face of a Patriarchal Capitalist Society

On March 8, the feminist movement flooded the streets of Mexico as part of a global day of mobilization. Among these thousands of women and dissidents, the main demand was an end to femicide and sexist violence.

Yara Villaseñor

March 31, 2023

Biden’s Proposed Budget Nothing but Empty Promises 

Earlier this month, Joe Biden announced his budget proposal, with a lot of promises. But the only thing we know he’ll deliver is that “nothing will fundamentally change.”

Molly Rosenzweig

March 31, 2023

At Least 39 Migrants Die in Fire at Detention Center in Mexico. The State Is Responsible.

The events of March 27 marked one of the darkest chapters in the Mexican State’s anti-immigrant policy, a policy that is increasingly subordinated to the interests of U.S. imperialism.