Among them is 73-year-old Frank Chapman of Chicago, who says a video released Tuesday showing the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by police officer Jason Van Dyke confirms what activists have said for years about Chicago police brutality. “We’re not trying to stop them from protesting, so why should they stop us from shopping?” Some even think that the 5 million dollar settlement that went to the “family, ‘ of LaQuand were bought off to be non assertive about the investigation-to just go away and let them manage it, including the press”. Listen to robo call from Rev. Jesse Jackson ” Join us Friday, the day after Thanksgiving at 11 a.m., MI and Wacker Drive to march down the Magnificent Mile to express our outrage and our sense of dignity”, the message said.
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Protesters make their way up North Michigan Avenue on Friday, Nov…
“We’re hoping to discourage shopping and hurt them economically until they hear us”, said Ariana, who declined to give her last name.
Also outside the same retailer, a protester confronted police officers, criticizing authorities for not releasing the dashcam video of McDonald’s death for 400 days.
The Magnificent Mile march aims to draw attention to what protesters see as a racial bias in policing.
Both Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and state attorney Anita Alvarez said there was no evidence to suggest the missing footage was a result of tampering, but McCarthy believes “technical difficulties” were to blame. “I pay to keep it unlisted”, she said.
After announcing that Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis would attend the Friday event, CTU officials later said she was not on hand.
“In a sense the city was born in bloody protest: the 1812 Fort Dearborn Massacre, when Native Americans rose up and attacked soldiers departing from a fort built on land that was incorporated as the City of Chicago 25 years later”, longtime Chicago political consultant Don Rose writes in an essay.
Van Dyke is facing first-degree murder charges because of the shooting. It shows McDonald, who had a knife, walking away from police officers.
Security guards at the multi-story mall anchored by Macy’s on one side and American Girl on the other asked shoppers inside to leave out the back entrance, across from the connected Ritz-Carlton hotel. “Without some disruption, there is not going to be any change”.
Van Dyke is being held without bond.
This time in Chicago, the police coverup failed. His attorney said Van Dyke feared for his life when he fired at McDonald and that the case should be tried in an actual courtroom, not the court of public opinion. It was the police who maintained a code of silence despite at least seven other officers who witnessed the shooting at close range.
“Other people shouldn’t have to pay for what happened to him”, Angelica Delgado, a 29-year-old Chicago resident, told the Tribune, according to a live blog of the protest.
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Donna More, also former prosecutor who is looking to take Alvarez’ seat, also posted a statement to Facebook after Van Dyke was charged questioning why the charges didn’t come earlier. “Water Tower Place has a very close working relationship with the Chicago Police Department”. A police spokesman says there were three arrests during the demonstration, two of them traffic related and the third resulted from a battery, but he didn’t elaborate.
