Protesters calling for an end to police brutality and a beginning to better race relations swarmed New York's streets by the thousands and blocked traffic on major arteries there and in cities nationwide.
After a New York grand jury decided not to indict a white police officer for killing a black man with a chokehold, protesters in near-freezing temperatures took over automobile lanes of the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan's West Side Highway and Chicago's Lake Shore Drive on Thursday night. Hundreds gathered near the Staten Island ferry terminal as police corralled them with metal barricades and stood at the ready with riot gear in hand.
"New York City is bearing witness that the people united can do anything," Daniel "Majesty" Sanchez, a 33-year-old organiser told protesters outside the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Nearby they had erected 11 black cardboard coffins with the names of people they said had perished at the hands of police, then staged a seven-minute silent "die-in." A police scanner was the only sound.
The demonstrations marked the second round of nationwide rallies after a Missouri grand jury refused last week to indict a white officer in the shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson. The New York panel declined December 3 to charge Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner, a 43-year-old father of six, whose fatal altercation with police on Staten Island was recorded on video by a bystander.
Thronged streets
The cases have public officials attempting to balance the demonstrators' rights to take to the streets, with the need to preserve public safety. The reaction in Ferguson last week devolved into mayhem, with looting, shooting, arson and vandalism.
In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio has sought to show residents that he's focused on improving police-civilian relations.
While there were more than 200 arrests, according to the Associated Press, the night was marked by relatively peaceful coexistence of demonstrators and police. Officers on the Brooklyn Bridge closed lanes to vehicles to allow protesters through. At one point, a line of police standing nearly shoulder to shoulder in downtown Brooklyn initially resisted advancing protesters, then let them through without incident.
From Harlem to Lower Manhattan, people carried signs reading "Black lives matter" and chanted Garner's final words: "I can't breathe." Crowds swarmed to police headquarters under high-powered beams of light trained on their heads by police helicopters circling overhead.
Among thousands who gathered in Manhattan's Foley Square before heading to Brooklyn was Constance Malcolm, mother of Ramarley Graham. The black 18-year-old was shot dead by police in the Bronx in February 2012. A grand jury didn't charge the white officer who killed him.
"We need police accountability," Malcolm told the crowd. "We can't bury our kids all the time while these officers go home to their families."
In Harlem, Ramon Jimenez, 66, a lawyer from the Bronx, asked for a moment of silence. Not even the Dec. 3 announcement that the U.S. Justice Department would investigate Garner's death has quelled frustration, he said.
'Believe It'
"They promise federal intervention as a way to cool us off," he said. "We'll believe it when we see it."
In Chicago, demonstrators shouted "Hands up, don't shoot!" and blocked Lake Shore Drive along Lake Michigan. There was a standoff with police. Then one officer borrowed a protester's bullhorn and thanked the masses for their composure, but said they would be subject to arrest if they didn't disperse. The highway reopened.
Demonstrations were planned last night in more than 60 other cities, according to one protest website. In Boston, marchers briefly shut down the Massachusetts Turnpike.
In Washington, people took to the streets, banging a drum and shouting, "No racist police, no justice, no peace." Some took aim at President Barack Obama, the nation's first black president.
"Obama has the power to shape the narrative, to shape the agenda, but he doesn't do that," said Devon O'Neal, a 21-year- old Washingtonian who works for a law firm. "I'm just fed up with the justice system in America. I'm fed up with the institutionalised racism I deal with every day as a black man."
O'Neal was among several dozen people who marched toward the White House, stopping briefly to raise fists in a black power salute.
Participants chanted "You've got to fight back" as the holiday song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" blasted from the White House lawn, where a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony was under way.
They rested hours later at City Hall, where the body of former mayor and civil rights activist Marion Barry lay in state.
