Tuesday in Manhattan, witnesses say a man drove his car into a line of pro-Palestinian Columbia University protesters and sent one of them to the hospital. On May 2, a motorist in Portland, Oregon, accelerated toward a group of Portland State University students protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza. Police say that driver stopped his car and got out and sprayed pepper spray in the direction of the protesters before running off. In late October in Minneapolis, someone drove into a crowd of pro-Palestinian protesters.
Reuven Kahane, the 57-year-old man who police say hit a woman in New York City on Tuesday, has been charged with second-degree assault.
Not enough outrage has followed these crimes. That’s most likely for two reasons. The first is that the targeted victims were protesting for people in Gaza. The second is that those acts of aggression follow a multistate effort to villainize protesters in general and to protect and even completely immunize from prosecution drivers who injure protesters with their vehicles.
Reuven Kahane, the 57-year-old man who police say hit a woman in New York City on Tuesday, has been charged with second-degree assault, according to the district attorney’s office. The 55-year-old woman whom police say he hit sustained only minor injuries and was released from the hospital. She and another volunteer there to protect the student protesters were arrested, too. The injured woman was charged with unlawful assembly and with criminal mischief because, police say, she banged on the hood of Kahane’s car; her 63-year-old fellow volunteer was also charged with criminal mischief, along with Kahane, accused of banging on the hood of his car. The district attorney is declining to prosecute them.
Kahane, a New York developer, declined to speak about the events leading up to his arrest when contacted by The Associated Press.
The Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 laid bare the country’s inherent racism against Black people and the protests that followed — protests that often deliberately shut down main thoroughfares, naturally prompting a white backlash.
It’s not the case in New York, but states across the country began passing bills that granted some immunity to drivers who injured protesters, essentially giving them a green light to wield their vehicles as weapons.
In April 2021, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed House Bill 1674, which says a motorist who “unintentionally causes injury or death to an individual shall not be criminally or civilly liable for the injury or death” if the motorist is “fleeing from a riot … under a reasonable belief that fleeing was necessary to protect the motor vehicle operator from serious injury or death” and “exercised due care at the time of the death or injury.” While, ostensibly, that doesn’t give motorists a free pass to deliberately run protesters over, it can very easily be abused by aggressive people who claim they were simply afraid.
“It’s not going to be a peaceful protest if you’re impeding the freedom of others,” Oklahoma state Rep. Kevin McDugle, who authored Oklahoma’s driver immunity bill, said at the time. Referring to a horrible incident in which a pickup truck drove into protesters and seriously injured three people, McDugle said, “The driver of that truck had his family in there, and they were scared to death.”
Iowa passed a law similar to Oklahoma’s months later.
A similar 2021 effort in Tennessee was ultimately thwarted. Even so, on Thursday, the governor signed into law a bill making it a felony to block a street or highway, and a bill that’s pending in the Louisiana Legislature this year seeks to limit the liability of people who drive into protesters in the road.
When Joe Biden announced his presidential campaign in 2019 via video message, he immediately invoked the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, “home to a defining moment for this nation in the last few years,” where “a violent clash ensued and a brave young woman lost her life.”
Heather Heyer, 32, who stood opposed to racists who had gathered in Charlottesville, was struck dead by a car driven by a man who himself was driven by hate.
But neither Biden nor other politicians on the right or the left or locally or nationally have said much about the recent trend of cars’ being driven toward or through protesters.
But neither Biden nor other politicians on the right or the left or locally or nationally have said much about the recent trend of cars’ being driven toward or through protesters. Is it because those acts haven’t killed anyone? Or is it because their targets aren’t considered worthy of an outcry?
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., posted on X last month: “I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands to get them out of the way. It’s time to put an end to this nonsense.”
The “nonsense” to which he refers is legitimate anti-authoritarian political protest. And that’s what Republicans really want to immunize themselves and their supporters from.
Whatever the reason for people not speaking out more about these incidents, we can’t become numb to the depravity of people driving into a crowd of people with whom they politically disagree. And we can’t become numb to the awfulness of politicians who, with their words and their legislation, are encouraging that kind of behavior.
