The Interlude

Thria Bernabe found themselves in the spotlight after a video of them getting arrested at a Black Lives Matter march was widely circulated on Twitter over the Fourth of July weekend. The 22-year-old community organizer was leading chants for some 50 protesters and signaling the group to follow on a crosswalk when police arrested and charged them with obstructing a highway or public passage. Despite being scared during the arrest, Bernabe continued to lead their group’s chants of “No justice, no peace!” until they were escorted away by two local police officers.

Following George Floyd’s death on May 25, there has been a resurgence of support for the Black Lives Matter movement. As tens of thousands poured onto the streets both in the United States and across the globe to protest police brutality against Black people, police in multiple cities shot tear gas and rubber bullets into crowds. Many were also arrested, prompting the surge of bail fund donations and mutual aid fundraisers to assist the protesters.

Bernabe’s arrest sparked a public outcry, leading to the creation of an online petition condemning the arrest as “shocking and unnecessary” and demanding the Ridgewood Police Department drop all charges against them. Since the petition was published last Thursday, more than 3,500 people have signed. “I’m still in shock and processing the full extent of what really happened,” said Bernabe. “I’m just so grateful for all the support I’ve been getting from all over the place.”

Thria Bernabe describes themselves as a queer Filipinx immigrant, the proud eldest child of a working-class family living in Ridgewood, NJ. Bernabe moved to the U.S. from the Philippines as a toddler and grew up in majority white communities for most of their childhood. They recall being in preschool when they first noticed and received microaggressions from peers.

“One of my earliest memories in the public school system was of two girls, who I thought were my friends, bullying me because I had an accent,” Bernabe said. “That has stuck with me throughout my entire life. Moving to predominantly white towns made me feel super alienated without any sense of community and I was surrounded by people who don’t look like me, think like me, or experience things the same way that I do.”

After graduating from Ridgewood High School, Bernabe joined the class of 2020 at the NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing and is currently working as a medical scribe at the NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center and Lower Manhattan Hospital.

Early on in their career, Bernabe discovered the intersection of housing injustices and disparities in healthcare after watching a patient die from hypothermia due to a lack of shelter in the winter and witnessing another denied help from the hospital due to the patient’s lack of resources. While Bernabe’s introduction to community organizing and activism came from the NYC Women’s March in 2017, it was Bernabe’s work as a medical scribe that woke them up and radicalized them to organize and empower others, especially during a time when minority populations are disproportionately affected by COVID-19. “Those two moments are what made me realize that there is so much the system should’ve done…the systems failed them,” Bernabe said. “That’s why I fight and that’s why I marched.”