Cynical me is seeing much evidence on local TV news and in videos on the internet that the 8 pm curfew in NYC is working out to the benefit of the more organized young protestors as to enabling them to practice the basics of non-violent protest theory, to get police to crack down and elicit sympathetic support from subsequent media coverage of the crackdown.

It was enacted by Gov. Cuomo executive order Tuesday night for Tues. through Sunday and De Blasio agreed. After all the looting occured on the weekend and with an 11 pm curfew on Monday after the protestors went home. The purpose was clearly to free the cops to pursue looters coming after the protesters went home. And to enable a period of time for property owners to board up and otherwise protect their property. Which had mostly been left unprotected and abandoned and unattacked (amazingly) for months while lockdown was going on.

So now there's this 8pm curfew. And the cops have to enforce it. So the more sophisticated and organized groups of protestors make it a point to start marches late near curfew time, to advertise when and where they will be to get the attention of cops and the media and then they purposefully stay past curfew. (The media all turns to life coverage of these particular protests at 8 pm. It is all set up to see the violence as cops try to enforce the curfew.

Which then gets the protesters sympathy from the media coverage, both MSM and social media.

Strikingly, they aren't fighting back. Unlike the type of bar room brawl fights between protestors and police I saw earlier in the protests coming from Brooklyn.

And police are under direct orders to enforce curfew.  As far as protestors are concerned, the more violent the police get about it and the more innocent and non violent the protesters look, the better.

In NYC (though not elsewhere, even elsewhere in NY state) the confrontation is all around curfew. Last night in the Bronx this was the scenario. A large bunch of protesters who did not look like South Bronx inhabitants held a protest in the South Bronx and intentionally stayed after curfew. That's where the police baton work happened. Earlier in the day, though, Bronx NY1 TV news coverage showed a montage of all manner of local daytime protest activities, obviously held by locals who are not very experienced at protesting, i.e., prayer and poetry circle in Van Cortlandt Park, which had little or no police presence and obeyed the curfew and experienced no drama.

The latter has not at all been effective for social news and media in order to get sympathy and attention. To do that you have to break curfew and elicit police crackdown. The pros coming from outside the hood are doing that. (T me, it seems the recent protests in Manhattan are the same thing and they are organized from Brooklyn, as there aren't that many residents of the protesting type in Manhattan right now)They got what they wanted: police cracking down pictures; attention from national news like Chris Hayes; police supporting sound bits from Cuomo and DeBlasio; national public seeing aggressive police tactics against peaceful protestors who are nonetheless breaking the law (curfew).

The end goal? I don't know. And I'm remaining open minded about whether it's smart or dumb.

I do want to say this much: Bronx is not "burning", not at all. It's got a population of 1.5 million and the huge majority are obeying curfew and don't want their shops looted. Do they like police? Well there's a big division, some groups hate looting so much that they do (especially recent immigrant communities like Dominicans and Albanians)  And others don't at all (low income in NYCHA projects) but are holding peaceful little protests in the daytime unattended by major police presence. It's these pros who are eliciting the police abuse. On purpose, by intentionally breaking curfew peacefully.

So far Cuomo and DeBlasio now coming out in support of police enforcing their curfew. I honestly don't know how cynical that is.

Is supposed to be over Sunday. Giving business property owners time to protect their property. We are also supposed to state Stage 1 opening on Monday, too. (Nearby counties are going to Stage 2 and have had no curfew and no violence problems.) We'll see.