Across the street from the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, where a crowd of protesters stood behind metal barricades, the chanting began just before 9 a.m. Leading the call and response was a Black man wearing jeans, a basketball jersey, and the signature green hat worn by Luigi, the Nintendo character from the Super Mario Bros. video games.

“No more deaths by denial!” he yelled.

“Put the system on trial!” the protesters yelled back.

“Corporate greed we must fight!”

“Health care is a human right!”

The man in the Luigi hat was Jonni Gartrelle, a New Yorker who moved back to the city from Miami last fall. At 36, he’d been involved in numerous activist causes, spending much of 2024 fighting alongside Planned Parenthood on a campaign to end Florida’s six-week abortion ban . But this

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