Eco Protester Arrested at US Open Has an Ugly Realization: He Wasn't Headed to Jail
I’m not sure what tennis has to do with climate change, but anyone who’d venture to make the connection would have good odds of being crazy.
Don’t tell them that, however, or they might get insulted.
Such is the case with Shayok Mukhopadhyay, one of three protesters with the extremist environmentalist group Extinction Rebellion who held up a U.S. Open tennis match Thursday night, according to the New York Post.
Mukhopadhyay glued his feet to the court at Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens during the semifinal women’s singles match between American Coco Gauff and Czech Karolina Muchova, halting play for about 50 minutes while protesters chanted boilerplate slogans such as “End fossil fuels” and “No tennis on a dead planet.”
“The climate change movement has tried everything from writing and lobbying for legislation to demonstrating and blockading banks, but none of that has been as effective as communicating directly to the public by going to public institutions like museums and sporting arenas,” Mukhopadhyay told the Post.
Coco Gauff’s US Open semi-final against Karolina Muchova halted by climate change protestors in the stands. #usopen pic.twitter.com/qded3qEYBN
— Matt Majendie (@mattmajendie) September 8, 2023
However, now he’s annoyed that the New York Police Department had the effrontery to take him to the psychiatric ward at East Elmhurst Hospital after his arrest, according to the New York Daily News.
Instead, the outlet’s Molly Crane-Newman wrote, the activist said the NYPD “tried to humiliate and discredit his environmental message” with the temporary trip to the hospital.
“I’ve been arrested before, but I’ve never had this experience,” Mukhopadhyay said.
“They were asking obvious leading questions like, ‘Do you think the world is going to end?’ This typical stereotype of the crazy, apocalyptic cult kind of thing,” he said.
This, according to the Daily News, included claims “medics asked him about the group and how members communicate with each other.”
“This was completely a mechanism to intimidate and humiliate and to paint a distorted picture of me,” Mukhopadhyay said.
“Who’s the crazy person here? It’s [President Joe] Biden who’s the crazy person here, who, in 2023, is approving new oil and gas projects when international energy agencies founded by Henry Kissinger – no tree hugger – have said there should be no new fossil fuel infrastructure,” he said.
He also tied his activism to his sympathies for his native country, India.
“India is something I constantly think about because I grew up there, and I’m keenly aware of how low the level of resource consumption and energy consumption is there,” Mukhopadhyay said.
“The Gangetic Delta, the mangrove forest, the Sundarbans, where the Ganges River empties into the Bay of Bengal, these are extremely vulnerable areas to climate change … They’re going to pay the price for this huge amount of resource and energy consumption in the global north,” he said. “That injustice really, really horrifies me.”
But, of course, being mentally evaluated at the psychiatric ward isn’t going to deter him — even though it’s not really a deterrent, but whatever.
“We need more media attention on the climate crisis. It doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves relative to the scale of the crisis that it is,” Mukhopadhyay told the Daily News.
“The only way we will have societal mobilization is if the public is mobilized, so we need to keep the issue constantly in front of the public and make it clear to them that our current way of life, what we are accustomed to, is not going to exist if this climate crisis goes unabated,” he said.
And, I reiterate, this is how Mukhopadhyay and his fellow Extinction Rebellion members plan on making sure it doesn’t go unabated:
Final protestor has been escorted out of the stadium. Players likely to return to court shortly. It’s been a 35-minute delay. pic.twitter.com/1HMU2CyjG8
— Matt Majendie (@mattmajendie) September 8, 2023
But don’t dare insinuate he might be a few organic, free-range eggs short of a basket, because this guy is totally with it.
By the way, Mukhopadhyay also got the criminal charges he apparently wanted in the first place, too, with NBC News reporting he was hit with criminal trespass and disorderly conduct citations. In a news release, the NYPD mentioned nothing about the psych ward trip.
“One individual had apparently glued his feet to the floor,” a department representative said in a statement. “Personnel from the Emergency Service Unit responded and were able to safely free the male and take him into custody.”
However, the trip to East Elmhurst wasn’t a bad idea. After all, anyone who thinks that gluing himself to something will stop anything — aside from his being perceived as sane — has deluded only himself and those with similar propensities.
Come to think of it, more Extinction Rebellion members probably ought to be receiving the same kind of treatment. Maybe it’ll help them get a handle on things.
Without the glue, of course.
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