Addressing reporters at a press briefing on Tuesday, the day after city workers welded the gates shut around parks in Brooklyn, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio defended his administration’s practice of locking down playgrounds even though he has participated personally in crowded Black Lives Matter and transgender protests in recent weeks.
De Blasio claimed that the city’s policy was to keep playgrounds closed until “Phase Two” of re-opening after the coronavirus pandemic, and warned that people who used playgrounds without permission risked spreading the disease.
He did not explain why he, along with tens of thousands of other New York progressives, marched in Black Lives Matter protests or protests on behalf of black transgender people, where social distancing rules were generally not observed.
Orthodox members of the large Jewish community in Brooklyn used bolt cutters to re-open playgrounds in their neighborhoods later the same day. Bravo.