‘Black Christmas’ protests over police shootings planned in Chicago and at the Mall of America
Nearly a month after disrupting Black Friday shoppers on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, protesters are planning to gather again for a march up the city’s busiest shopping district for a “Black Christmas” demonstration Thursday in response to the fatal shooting by a police officer of Laquan McDonald.
“We know there will be a lot of last-minute Christmas Eve shoppers,” said Gregory Livingston, a member the Coalition for a New Chicago, one of the groups organizing the demonstration in the shopping area known as the Magnificent Mile. “We hate to be disruptive, but we hope to once again affect economics on Mag Mile to appeal to the merchants, and appeal to [Mayor Rahm] Emanuel on his cover-up and sequent actions that he needs to step down.”
Demonstrators hope to mimic the Black Friday protest, which hurt the bottom line for many retail stores.
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And Black Lives Matter organizers said members planned to protest at the Mall of America in Minneapolis in an effort to pressure authorities to release video footage of the fatal police shooting of Jamar Clark, 24. Minnesota’s governor ordered state troopers to be on scene to assist local police.
In Chicago, about a dozen protesters gathered Tuesday outside the mayor’s office to call for the mayor and Cook County State’s Atty. Anita Alvarez to resign. It took 13 months for Alvarez’s office to charge Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke with murder, and Emanuel’s administration fought release of the dashboard camera video of the shooting.
The protesters chanted loudly and held signs that read “Rahm you have failed us” a few feet from police officers who stood guard outside the garland-framed entrance of Emanuel’s fifth-floor office.
“It is clear the citizens of Chicago don’t want you in office anymore,” said Lamon Reccord, a 16-year-old activist. “Message to Rahm: While you’re out on vacation, we’re going to leave this message for you when you get back. Because we will drag you out of that office for justice.”
Emanuel is in Cuba on a family vacation.
Protesters chanted “Am I next? Will you shoot me 16 times?” in reference to the number of bullets Van Dyke fired at McDonald in October 2014.
Several of the activists also held signs with the name and drawings of Sandra Bland a day after a Waller County, Texas, grand jury decided no felony crime was committed by the sheriff’s office or jailers in the treatment of the black woman from Naperville, Illinois. Officials say Bland committed suicide last summer in Waller County Jail after being arrested following a traffic stop.
After the demonstration at City Hall, protesters staged a “die-in” outside the Thompson Center state office building. A line of officers rebuffed protesters who attempted to enter the train station there.
Protesters marched toward the Chicago Transit Authority station at Lake and State streets and plastered stickers with the phrase “Dethrone Rahm 2015” on the windows of a train car while shouting “16 shots.”
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Earlier, protesters used those stickers to hang posters on City Hall. Police officers threatened to arrest them for defacing public property if they didn’t take them down. The protesters argued but ultimately did so.
Twitter @_tonybriscoe
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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