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Protesters shut down MLK Bridge in St. Louis on Tuesday, November 25, in ongoing protests against the grand jury’s decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown. (Photo: OBS_StL/Twitter)
Ferguson activists on Tuesday blocked a highway in St. Louis and interstate bridge as part of a continued series of protests after a grand jury announced on Monday they would not indict police officer Darren Wilson for the August 9 shooting death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown.
“If we don’t get it, shut it down!” sit-in protesters screamed as police advanced on them Tuesday afternoon.
Protesters updated the shutdown-as well as solidarity actions throughout the country-with the hashtag #Ferguson.
“This moment is a historic one,” organizers with Ferguson Action, a coalition of local community groups, said in a call to action after the decision was announced. “Just like people have done throughout American history, we are making our voices heard, taking to the streets and using our first amendment rights to engage in strong actions of civil disobedience.”
Lou Downey, co-founder of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, told
Common Dreams, “Bringing business as usual to a halt needs to continue and be built on. People need to stay in the streets. Don’t go to work. Walk out of school or make stopping this genocidal program what your schooling is about. People in the neighborhoods where police routinely brutalize and murder need to make their anger felt [through] mass political resistance.”
“Everyone has to take a side in this fight-Are you with the police who murder Black youth and the system that gives them a stamp of approval? Or are you with the people who are standing up and saying NO MORE to this shit?” Downey said in an email.
He added that organizers will be “mobilizing people for the day after Thanksgiving so it becomes ‘Black Lives Matter’ day instead of getting a jump on Christmas shopping.”
Some protests will target a Walmart in the Ferguson area to call for justice for John Crawford, the black man killed in August by police in a Walmart in Ohio.