Within minutes, the protesters, singing and praying, got what they wanted. The two dozen police officers standing by politely whisked them into a large patrol wagon, and traffic moved on.
The site for this act of civil disobedience was chosen because it sits in the shadow of the 11th-floor offices of the Iranian mission to the United Nations.
“It’s so different to be arrested here in New York, in a free country,” Weiss, president of the Coalition for Jewish Concerns — Amcha, told a crowd of 70 or so supporters before leading his troops into the street. “But in this tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny way, we are expressing our solidarity with our brethren who are suffering in Iran.”