A week ago, I recorded a violent assault on a bicyclist in Midtown Manhattan. This video was posted to Twitter by an unknown third party without my knowledge or consent. By the time I was home safe, it had already been viewed 1 million+ times on Twitter alone. The video received national press coverage as well as the attention of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo & Attorney General Letitia James. To my knowledge, no arrests have been made nor any figures identified from that evening, in spite of it being addressed by many news networks and commentators, as well as several national legislators.

There is important context to the video, which I am now sharing, as well as my reasons for coming forward.

On the evening of Wednesday, June 3rd, I was driving to meet a friend, when I encountered a police detour. I stopped while at the intersection of Third Avenue & 50th Street in Midtown Manhattan.

I saw a bicyclist in the crosswalk about 10-feet away from me, and waited for him to cross the street, when he suddenly paused, stood on his pedals, and looked over his shoulder. An armed police officer raised a baton and approached the cyclist. I felt uneasy. Without thinking, I picked up my cell phone and began recording their interaction.

I stopped recording when I realized that all three men were wearing pistols and moving towards me. I was terrified and tried to turn left against traffic.

I managed to drive about 30 feet away from the scene when I was stopped by a traffic jam of civilian and official vehicles parked in different directions. Heavy rain began to fall; I looked back to where I had just fled, and saw several dozens of people, with and without police uniforms.

I made a final attempt to drive away. A man, not wearing a uniform, told me to park my car. I was in tears. I asked if I could please leave as I was very afraid. He instructed me to not move.

I remained inside the car, alone, for approximately an hour. I was in shock and shared the video with my family and friends, explaining I was trapped in my car and didn’t understand what was happening. There was a lot of noise coming from the intersection, and I could see dozens of people, in various types of uniform and regular clothing, running into and away from the scene. Heavy rain continued to fall.

Uniformed NYPD created a formal barricade with armed, uniformed officers and marked NYPD vans in the intersection where I first witnessed the cyclist incident. At one point, a large, unmarked bus pulled up beside me and men dressed in all black stepped off of the bus. I couldn’t see clearly through the rain, but the scene eventually cleared, and, once I saw a break, I finally made my way home.

I am a first-generation American. My family immigrated from Mexico. Fear paralyzed me that night and in the days that followed. I have delayed making any public comment out of concern that I or my loved ones may face retaliation for revealing police misconduct.

My insecurity with legal authorities began as a child, when I was sexually abused by a relative who lived in my home. Out of shame and guilt, I concealed this fact from anyone until many years later. When a police investigation was launched, the officer asked me if I was raising the issue for my parents’ attention, and suggested I was better off leaving the past behind. I was asked if this was really worth it; did I really care for the trouble caused?

Because of my background, a woman of Mexican heritage- fears around profiling and long-documented concerns in the Latinx community about the dangers of interactions with law enforcement- it has been difficult for me to come forward. I have spent the past week, and a large portion of my life, with reluctance to speak against powerful authorities, even when personally aggrieved.

I do not wish to continue living my life in this silent fear, for whatever personal assurance it may offer.

I am choosing, instead, to take the risk and come forward as a direct eyewitness with material testimony to the blatant police brutality I witnessed the night of Wednesday, June 3rd.

My hope is to lend my voice to justice, and to provide a small example to those whose shame or fears prevent them from fully participating in a free democracy and exercising their Constitutional Rights.

It is in this spirit that I make this statement; I am willing to cooperate with any investigation that may follow so that justice may be rightfully served.

Thank you for reading my message,

Karla Moreno

“No shop class, but half the school got a tool

and an ‘I could die any day’-type attitude…

It’s time for us to stop and redefine black power

41 souls murdered in 50 hours.”

In his hit­ “New Slaves” West also rapped:

“Meanwhile the DEA

Teamed up with the CCA

They tryna lock n****s up

They tryna make us new slaves”

While the messages conveyed by these rappers were by no means radical opinions within the black community, they were ones which heavily deviated from the often misogynistic and thug­-glorifying tones most prevalent in mainstream hip hop and rap. In December 2015, T​he Rolling Stone f​eatured an article outlining the transition of hip hop’s tones since the turn of the century: “the p​ublic can no longer be sold the noxious and recherché notion that 21st­century rap culture is about trap­happy nigras…the struggle against racialized injustice matters where rap and hip­hop live.”

Pundits and critics have raised questions of whether hip hop itself has become more conscious, or mainstream audiences have become more receptive and demanding of politically charged lyrics. The work of 90’s artists Public Enemy, Wu Tang Clan, 2Pac, and Lauryn Hill serve as a referenced “first wave” of socially­conscious and commercially successful rap, and although many of their tones influenced other hip hop artists through present, it wasn’t until 2005 that mainstream sounds voiced outright social critiques and political discourse.

It’s largely through this progression that I explore how millennial-aged black males channeled their frustrations of growing up in communities overwhelmed with the effects levied by the War on Drugs, namely mass incarceration and recidivism. This paper highlights the evolution of hip hop and rap music as a form of political protest by young black males. While their grievances may be many, I intend to focus on the ones which are results of the policies enacted by the late Reagan­-Clinton administrations which championed what we now know as the “War on Drugs”.

It would be inaccurate to conclude that compared to gangsta rap, only the more politically-­literate “hip hop proper” (a phrase coined by Greg Tate, Africana Studies professor at Brown University) holds legitimate grounds and accounts of the black community’s struggle for social progress. Certainly, in many lights, the characters and narratives portrayed in gangsta rap do set destructive examples for young generations, however, it ought not be dismissed as the single nor greatest factor which perpetuates cycles of mass incarceration, poverty, and violence. Both hip hop proper and gangsta rap effectively and accurately reflect the lives and struggles of not only those currently under the criminal justice system, but the communities across America with sons, brothers, and fathers as victims. My work is not an attempt to make less valid those accounts in gangsta rap, but one to understand the shift in lyrical content from what Michelle Alexander describes as modern­-day minstrel shows to institutional, socio­political and economic analysis on mainstream charts.

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This serves as detail of the thesis project I’m currently working on in Notre Dame, Indiana, with the advising of 6 different departments, across two colleges. Publishing is due mid-Spring, 2016.