While stars, celebrities and Anna Wintour ascended the steps at the Met Gala on Monday night, protesters began assembling on the streets just surrounding the museum.
In Central Park, a small group of protesters, accompanied by an A.C.L.U. observer in a blue vest, gathered with cardboard signs reading “No Met Gala While Bombs Drop in Gaza” and “No Celebration Without Liberation,” mixed in among signs that mostly dealt directly with the war in Gaza. Representatives of the group declined to answer questions or say how many protesters they were expecting.
Another larger group made its way along Fifth Avenue, with many participants waving Palestinian flags and chanting “Gaza! Gaza!” as they clapped and banged drums.
The New York Police Department, trying to create space between the protesters and the event, assembled barricades at various intersections surrounding the area, but around 6:30 p.m., as the glitz and glamour of the event’s red carpet arrivals were in full swing, the police began making arrests just a block away on Madison Avenue, drawing complaints from some of the protesters that the police had worn riot gear while arresting people who were assembling peacefully.
Nearby, Mark J. Levy, a 19-year-old student at Yeshiva University, stood on the sidewalk draped in an Israeli flag in counterprotest.
The influx of people in the area, and the large police presence — at least one helicopter could be heard circling the area and officers on Madison Avenue had zip-tie handcuffs hanging from their waists as they maneuvered around city buses in the street — had protesters and commuters jockeying for sidewalk space.
Some passers-by along Fifth Avenue were heard referring to the protests as “antisemitic” and “anti-American.”
But like many other protesters, Alice Farley, 73, held her ground on Madison Avenue, carrying a sign that read “Ceasefire Now” with an American flag draped over it. Ms. Farley, a performance artist, said she joined the protesters earlier in the evening at Hunter College and made her way north with the group.
“I’ve been protesting since I was 10, but this in on another level,” Ms. Farley said of recent campus protests at Columbia University and elsewhere, many of which have led to changes or cancellations of commencement ceremonies.
Showing the wide mix of people in the area, a man wearing a kaffiyeh and riding a Citi Bike paused at the East 82nd Street police barricade and shouted, “Stop sending bombs to kill civilians,” at a group of people craning for a glimpse of the celebrities.
“Let’s go, Knicks,” one of the men in the crowd yelled in response. “That’s not funny,” the biker yelled back.
