Inspired by Black Lives Matter, This Masked Man Patrols Under the Cover of Darkness

Block by block, cycle-bound activist Sabir Abdussabur fights injustice on the streets of New Haven, Connecticut.

Photos by Monica Jorge

It’s seven o’clock, Saturday, December 9, 2017.

Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut, first snowfall of the year.

Sabir Askari Abdussabur emerges from The Grove, a downtown co-working space fashioned within the old Horowitz Brothers fabric store, where he runs his marketing agency, 4Real Productions, on the top floor.

He rolls out of the building with Mater, his custom-built rusty black Schwinn Sidewinder. The bike is equipped with passenger pegs, a cushioned trunk seat, and deflated knobby tires for handling the snow. Three interlinked Kryptonite steel locks hang from his handlebars. Abdussabur often holds the chain of locks out into the street, using it as a hand signal to cars when he rides. A driver once mistook the locks for a gun, resulting in Abdussabur getting searched by police in a parking lot the next town over.

He’s wearing shin guards, padded gloves, a few layers of clothing, and ten-dollar shoes from Walmart. The black mask he’ll soon don is propped up…