Demonstrators filled the streets of this city’s premier shopping district on Friday, demanding justice in the shooting death of a black teenager by a white Chicago police officer.
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Hours before the video release, prosecutors charged Van Dyke with first-degree murder.
Led by Jesse Jackson, protesters held signs reading “Stop Police Terror”, “White Silence = White Consent” and the like as they marched northward down the middle of Michigan Avenue on “Black Friday”, the traditional post-Thanksgiving day of shopping frenzy. City officials have said they didn’t release the video because it was part of an active investigation.
But the protests also show both restraint by police and the professionalization of the Black Lives Matter movement, which began after the hardhearted police response to protesters in Ferguson, Mo., last year.
Uncredited/AP Laquan McDonald was shot and killed by Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke on October 20, 2014.
“I grew up in Italy under Mussolini – I wasn’t brought up with all this”, he confided with a smile, gesturing to the crowd, which was chanting that McDonald had been shot 16 times.
Around the nation, protests were held in other cities on one of the busiest shopping days of the year in expressions of dismay over police conduct and the treatment of black people.
At one point, balls of tear gas were lodged at protests.
Chicago Apple store employees look to protesters lined up outside the Apple store on North Michigan Avenue on Friday, Nov. 27. “I hate to say [the protest] is an inconvenience but it is”.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said she joined the call to fire Police Supt.
Amid cries of “Send Rahm to jail”, Jackson and the other officials quickly dispersed as the masses hijacked Jackson’s presentation, and competed with the shoppers who flocked downtown to advantage of Black Friday sales.
In addition, they called on the US Justice Department to investigate the police department’s handling of the incident. “This was just shooting a child – and 16 times?” Other stores and retail centers, including Water Tower Place, American Girl and Salvatore Ferragamo temporarily locked their doors to keep protesters out.
Van Dyke’s attorney has said the officer feared for his life when he fired at McDonald and that the case should be tried in the courtroom, not in social media or on city streets. “Get a piece of paper, 8 1/2 by 11, and write “We’re open” on it and paste it on every one of your windows, letting people know you’re open”. “I just wish people were out here protesting the conditions we live in sooner”. “The mayor has made it very clear that he has my back, and if people peel away the onion on what’s happening right now in the policing world, you’re going to find a police department that’s doing an exceptional job, and quite frankly I’m not going to quit on the people of Chicago, and I’ll never quit on these men and women”.
So in the rain today’s activists on behalf of the LaQuan McDonald came out in numbers to Chicago’s Magnificent Mile beginning at the Tribune Towers represented various groups creating factions there for the same cause but with different ideas about how to go about acheiving the goal.
In Chicago, Van Dyke turned himself in to authorities Tuesday and has been charged with first degree murder.
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The video shows him holding a knife when the police cars arrive and Mr Van Dyke emerges from his auto.
