On one of the busiest shopping days of the year, thousands of #BlackLivesMatter protesters packed the Mall of America outside Minneapolis on Saturday to call for police reform in the wake of the officer-involved deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m getting my feelings out and I\u2019m letting the world know that we\u2019re not going to take this anymore,\u201d Emma Eubanks, a 18-year-old protester told Fusion just before the event began.<\/p>\n
Upon hearing the news that two police officers had been killed in New York by a fugitive gunman, Eubanks (who is the subject of the video above), said she \u201cdidn\u2019t condone violence\u201d and that her heart was with the families of the slain officers. She worried that the killings could \u201cprovoke a wave of anger and hate\u201d against black activists and those pushing for police reforms.<\/p>\n
The mall had sent a letter to organizers warning that anyone protesting in in the mall could be \u201cremoved, arrested and banned.\u201d As demonstrators gathered near the rotunda, an electronic billboard flanked by large Christmas trees switched from holiday shopping themed messages to an ominous warning, written in all-caps.<\/p>\n
Protesters ignored the sign, and chants of \u201chands up, don\u2019t shoot\u201d drowned out police calls to disperse.<\/p>\n
They held \u201cdie-ins,\u201d laying down in front of stores when police approached.<\/p>\n
Later, the protests broke up into smaller groups and marched through the mall.<\/p>\n
Police blocked off certain areas, but avoided mass arrests.<\/p>\n
Michael McDowell, a 20-year-old protester from Minneapolis told Fusion the protesters selected the Mall of America because \u201cif we\u2019re spending our dollar\u2026they should step up.\u201d<\/p>\n
He and other organizers want said they were pushing for more direct community control over police departments.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to make sure that there\u2019s some solid policy around community control over police,\u201d he said, \u201cso community deciding what cops get hired in their communities and essentially making sure that the cops that get hired are from the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Organizers said 20 people were arrested and cited with trespassing. Fusion saw what appeared to be a couple of handcuffed protesters being walked out the building by police.<\/p>\n
Minnesotans weren\u2019t the only ones to stage protests on Saturday. Protesters staged a die-in in Park City, Utah, and Baltimore, as well.<\/p>\n
Source: fusion.net<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On one of the busiest shopping days of the year, thousands of #BlackLivesMatter protesters packed the Mall of America outside Minneapolis on Saturday to call for police reform in the wake of the officer-involved deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. \u201cI\u2019m getting my feelings out and I\u2019m letting the world know that we\u2019re not … Continue reading “#BlackLivesMatter storm Mall of America”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[10754,10753,4270,157],"class_list":["post-17299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-united-states","tag-black-lives-matter","tag-mall-of-america","tag-racial-tension","tag-racism"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17299"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17300,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17299\/revisions\/17300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}