“Don’t shop on Black Friday, and go down to Michigan Avenue and sit down in the street and block the street on Michigan Avenue with civil disobedience peacefully, and say, ‘Business as usual can’t go on while our children are dying, ‘” Rev. Michael Pfleger said during his sermon November 22, according to DNAInfo Chicago.
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Protesters locked arms outside the doors of major retailers such as Neiman Marcus and Tiffany & Co., preventing shoppers from entering.
Store employees directed shoppers to exit from side doors.
At the front of the march walked the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., who led almost 1,000 people to the site of the historic Chicago Water Tower where speakers rallied protesters through megaphones.
Chanting “Stop the cover up, 16 shots” and “Black power”, demonstrators marched through rain and mist along Michigan Avenue, shutting down the avenue’s northbound lanes and partially blocking the southbound lane as shoppers stood in the sidewalks.
Van Dyke and other officers were responding to a report of a teen with a knife who had been breaking into cars on the night McDonald was shot. “People are mad here in Chicago”. He says despite people screaming in their faces, getting hit with spittle and thrown objects, officers are acting in a professional manner. However, McCarthy said he has no plans to resign, and the mayor has given him has full support.
“I’ve never quit on anything in my life”, McCarthy said.
“If you and I were in a fight, man to man, that’s one issue”. Yet the video and various actions taken before and after the shooting point to systemic and institutional problems that extend far beyond one allegedly trigger-happy cop.
Hundreds of protesters blocked store entrances and shut down four lanes of traffic in Chicago’s ritziest shopping district on Black Friday to draw attention to the 2014 police killing of a black teenager who was shot 16 times by a white officer.
Critics say that city and federal researchers haven’t shown urgency in dealing with the instance; local columnist and editor Carol Marin pins blame on both “the feds” and President Obama, writing in the Sun Times Friday, “The president doesn’t run”.
Community members march with a casket outside of City Hall in protest of the police shooting of Laquan McDonald and the murder of Tyshawn Lee. “The police leadership has to change as well as its infrastructure”, Jackson told CNN moments before Friday’s march began. Justice. When do we want it? “Furthermore, they have been dishonest about those practices, in some cases even covering up illegal activity”. She stepped out in the name of justice, despite what it could do for the city.
Third, the video only was made public thanks to the efforts of Brandon Smith, a freelance journalist who had sought the release under the Freedom of Information Act and had filed a lawsuit in August to force the Police Department to comply. Van Dyke reloaded his weapon to continue shooting, but was told to cease his fire.
“The state’s attorney has no credibility”, Jackson said.
McDonald swings into view on a four-lane street where police vehicles are stopped in the middle of the roadway. That announcement came one day before a judge-ordered deadline for the city to release the video. The newspaper accused the mayor’s office of “a pattern of noncompliance, partial compliance, delay and obfuscation” in handling the public’s requests to see records.
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When will Emanuel and his cronies be forced to take responsibility for theirs?
