 El Grito de Sunset Park gathering in 2016 | |
| Formation | c. 2002 |
|---|---|
| Type | 501(c)(3) organization |
| Location | |
| Website | elgritodesunsetpark |
El Grito de Sunset Park is a Puerto Rican activist organization in Brooklyn [1] [2] that has been described as a police watchdog. [3]
One of the founders of El Grito de Sunset Park is Dennis Flores, a "cop watcher" who began documenting the activities of the New York City Police Department in 1995. [2] [4] [5] He has been arrested more than 70 times for his activities. [4] Flores and others founded El Grito de Sunset Park in 2002, before filming police activities was common. [5] According to Flores, the organization was founded with a $270,000 settlement he received after the police attacked him in 2002. [6] The group became a 501(c)(3) organization in 2015. [7]
The organization has roots in the primarily Puerto Rican neighborhood of Sunset Park in Brooklyn. The name "El Grito" means "the cry" or "the call" in Spanish, and is a reference to the independence movements El Grito de Lares in Puerto Rico and El Grito de Dolores in Mexico. [8] El Grito de Sunset Park has ties to the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican radical group. [1] The group's founders were influenced by social movements in Latin America; Flores witnessed organizing efforts in the Mexican city of Oaxaca in 2006 and 2007, while Jason Del Aguila, also a cofounder, worked for some time in Guatemala and El Salvador. [9]
El Grito de Sunset Park's activities include organizing an art festival; advocating against gentrification; and photographing police activities. [8] When it began, the organization would film police responses to the Puerto Rican Day Parade, which were sometimes violent. Eventually, the group began to film all year. [5] In 2012, the group supported a rent strike in Sunset Park. Hispanic music and spoken word poetry are commemorated in videos made by El Grito de Sunset Park. [10] In 2015, the group began organizing its own Puerto Rican Day Parade and Festival. [11] It worked to gather and send supplies to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017. [8] In 2014, one of the group's videos played a role in charges against a teenage resident of Sunset Park getting dropped, [12] while in 2015 another helped get charges dropped against a Mexican street vendor accused of attacking a policeman. [5]