Ferguson-front protesters target retail’s big day
Raising awareness, they say
ST. LOUIS — Demonstrators protesting a grand jury’s decision not to indict a white police officer in the killing of an unarmed black teenager attempted to disrupt holiday shopping from New York to San Francisco on Friday.
Some of the Black Friday protests led to face-offs with police in Manhattan’s Herald Square and suburban St. Louis, where demonstrators temporarily shut down three large malls. In Oakland, Calif., demonstrators shut down some Bay Area Rapid Transit service, the agency said on its website.
Crowds have been demonstrating since a county grand jury decided Monday not to indict officer Darren Wilson in the Aug. 9 fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. An autopsy showed that Brown had been shot six times. His death has become a national symbol of racial inequality and heavy-handed police tactics.
Friday’s activity in the St. Louis area was different because it occurred in places previously untouched by unrest.
Several stores lowered their security doors or locked entrances as at least 200 protesters sprawled onto the floor for what they called a “die-in” while chanting, “Stop shopping and join the movement,” at the Galleria mall in Richmond Heights, about 10 miles south of Ferguson.
The protest prompted authorities to close the mall for about an hour Friday afternoon, and a similar protest of about 50 people had the same effect at West County Mall in nearby Des Peres. It didn’t appear any arrests were made.
Several dozen protesters then went to the Chesterfield Mall, which closed early.
Protesters said the action Friday was part of a strategy to expand the movement.
“This needs to come to the suburbs,” said Lucy Randall, a 23-year-old student at Washington University in St. Louis. She marched through the West County Mall in Des Peres, Mo., holding a sign that read: “Silence = Death.”
Similar demonstrations were planned in more than 40 cities, said Leslie MacFadyen, who runs a website that aggregates Ferguson-related protests nationwide.
In New York on Friday, hundreds of protesters took to the streets, marching from Herald Square to Times Square with signs that read “Out of the Store, Into the Street,” while chanting, “Hands Up, Don’t Shop.”
Demonstrators congregated in front of the New York Public Library chanting, “Black lives matter,” and beating drums. When police gathered in front of the crowd, there were cries of “Who do you serve?”
In Chicago, about 200 people gathered near the city’s popular Magnificent Mile shopping district, where Kristiana Colon, 28, called Friday “a day of awareness and engagement.” She’s a member of the Let Us Breathe Collective, which has been taking supplies such as gas masks to protesters in Ferguson.
“We want them to think twice before spending that dollar today,” she said of shoppers. “As long as black lives are put second to materialism, there will be no peace.”
Malcolm London, a leader in the Black Youth Project 100, which has been organizing Chicago protests, said the group was also trying to rally support for other issues, such as more transparency from Chicago police.
“We are not indicting a man. We are indicting a system,” London told the crowd.
Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Some retailers kicked off the event early by opening their stores Thursday night.
“A lot of the actions in Ferguson have been able to be removed from the kind of daily life of the suburban people,” Randall said in St. Louis. “And this feels like ‘OK, we’re coming to you.’”
More than 200 protesters marched through the St. Louis Galleria Mall chanting and singing as shoppers looked on. Several stores closed during the march, with some locking customers inside. A man in a Santa Claus costume who had posed for pictures with children earlier in the day left his oversized chair as protesters chanted “No Black Friday.”
Residents across St. Louis called the police earlier in the day to ask whether it was safe to shop at local malls, said Rick Eckherd, a St. Louis County police spokesman.
At one Wal-Mart location in Manchester, Mo., about two dozen officers formed a line in front of the store, blocking protesters from entering. National Guard Humvees and police cruisers could be seen driving around the parking lots of Wal-Marts, Target stores and malls.
In Manchester, several dozen protesters marched through stores with their hands up, chanting, “Arrest Darren Wilson,” and “No Justice! No Peace!”
Kathy Toghiyany, 57, of Ladue, Mo., said the demonstrators were scaring shoppers.
“They need to lock them up and keep them locked up,” she said. “Why do they have to harass us? I’m not afraid of them. The police are afraid of them — they need to stop this.”
Toghiyany said she used to live in the northern part of St. Louis County, where many of the protests have taken place. She was part of the exodus of whites from the inner suburbs to the towns farther out from the city. “I’m glad I left,” she said. Michael Scott encountered protesters on two separate occasions while shopping early Friday morning in suburban St. Louis. Their presence at a Wal-Mart sent shoppers scurrying away, and their chanting disrupted shopping at the West County Center, said Scott, 18.
“It’s ignorant,” he said. “They’re fighting racial prejudice by fitting their stereotype.”
Scott said the protesters should accept the grand jury’s findings, at one point clapping his hands at the group and saying, “You don’t have all the evidence. You don’t have all the evidence.”
Late Friday, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon announced that he will call a special session of the state General Assembly to provide funding for public safety efforts related to protests in the Ferguson area.
A news release from the governor’s office said that because of the increased presence of the State Highway Patrol and the Missouri National Guard in the region, the state’s financial obligations for emergency duties are on track to exceed what is appropriated.
The statement said that Nixon held a call with legislative leaders Friday night and more details about the session will be announced in the coming days.
Meanwhile, in Ferguson on Friday, the police reopened on a limited basis West Florissant Avenue, where rioting broke out Monday night after the grand jury’s decision.
The St. Louis County police, which had since Monday considered the commercial strip to be an active crime scene, lifted its blockades before 1 p.m. But in a statement, the department said the thoroughfare would close again later in the day and would be shut down between 5 p.m. and 7 a.m. “until further notice.”
Most businesses along the corridor remained shuttered, either by choice or because the buildings were destroyed by arson Monday night. State troopers guarded some businesses. Farther north, in neighboring Dellwood, Mayor Reggie Jones said more than 10 percent of his city’s business district had been destroyed.
Friday night, more than a dozen protesters were arrested outside of the Ferguson Police Department.
Tensions escalated late Friday during an initially calm demonstration after police said protesters were illegally blocking West Florissant Avenue.
Missouri Department of Public Safety spokesman Mike O’Connell told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch 15 people were arrested.
On Thursday night, parts of Ferguson, now twinkling with Christmas lights, appeared almost ordinary.
There were reminders, though, that the city remained in a state of emergency. The Missouri National Guard maintained a presence, as did the police, and a helicopter flew overhead from time to time.
Information for this article was contributed by Toluse Olorunnipa, Cordell Eddings and Allyson Versprille of Bloomberg News; by Alan Blinder, Mitch Smith and Hiroko Tabuchi of The New York
Times; and by Jim Salter, Tom Foreman Jr., Phillip Lucas, David A. Lieb, Mae Anderson, Sara Burnett, Kristin J. Bender and staff members of The Associated Press.