NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Members of the Orthodox Jewish community staged protests Tuesday at playgrounds shuttered by the city in their Brooklyn neighborhoods, suggesting there is a double standard for their community -- and in defiance, they opened up the locked spaces.
The protesters pointed to Sunday's Black Trans Lives Matter rally outside the Brooklyn museum, which attracted thousands of people crammed together. They also pointed to the videos being posted to social media of bar-goers filling the streets of the East Village and Hell's Kitchen.
NYS Assembly Member Simcha Eichenstein, whose district includes Borough Park and parts of Midwood, was one of the protesters at Dome Playground in Borough Park Tuesday who participated in opening up the playground.
In an interview with 1010 WINS, he was adamant that the parks belong to the communities which they serve, and that there is a double standard at work.
"This park does not belong to to any one particular official," he told 1010 WINS' Susan Richard. "This park was built with our tax dollars and it belongs to our community. The governor announced last week that the parks can open and playgrounds can open and the mayor is refusing to open it. We have called on the mayor to open it."
Citing this past weekend's Black Trans Lives Matter protest, he said, "If it is OK for thousands of people to protest in the streets with no regard for social distancing, if it's OK for thousands of people to go to the beaches, why is it always that it's our children who are punished?"
Hammering home his point, he said, "This park belongs to our community. If there are sanitary (rules) that need to be implemented, I'm all for it. Obviously we want it in a safe manner ... the MTA's new trains are being sanitized every single night. Why can't we do that for our children?"
But does Eichenstein believe he's breaking the law? No.
"We are opening the park in compliance with the governor's executive order and we're giving it back to our children ... if the city wants to arrest us for giving our parks back to our children, they know where to find me."
He also told 1010 WINS, the reality is, that kids in the neighborhood have been holed up in mostly small apartments for more than 90 days.
"Our children have been cramped in city apartments for the last 3 months," he said. "I don't know if the mayor knows what that means, but not everyone lives in a mansion on the Upper East Side with a huge lawn behind the house and an even bigger yard on the side of the house."
And aside from Mayor de Blasio's digs, he points to other neighborhoods. "Why are some parks open in the city ... I don't have a single park open in my district ... I've been waiting for days now to hear back from the city."
Fellow Assembly Member Joseph Lentol also protested the shuttered playgrounds. He said in a statement, "When attending today's rally, I said I believe that the playground should be open and said so very strongly. While I did not see the locks being cut, I understand the frustration which would lead that to happening."
"Our families do not feel that they are being heard. I see this rally as a peaceful message, with the clipping of the locks as a strong signal that the families are unhappy and fed up. They want activities for their children and they want to be heard. The city must come up with a better plan than cutting off access to playgrounds entirely," Lento said.
Jewish elected officials went cutting open the gates to other parks in Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn.
A video posted to social media, below, shows demonstrators as they use a bolt cutter outside of Middleton Playground in Williamsburg to pry the locks open.