The American Civil Liberties Union tweeted Friday that \u201cBlack Spring has begun\u201d and called on the protesters to make a stand.<\/p>\n
On Friday morning, four days after the most violent civil unrest since the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King in 1968, State\u2019s Attorney Marilyn Mosby had stood nearby before a bank of television cameras beaming her words live around the world. <\/p>\n
She announced criminal charges against the officers ranging from assault to murder in the death of Freddie Gray.<\/p>\n
Blacks see Baltimore as a rallying point against so-called police brutality and socio-economic inequality in American cities.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo the youth of the city,\u201d Mosby, 35, said as she announced the charges. \u201cThis is a moment. This is your moment. \u2026 You\u2019re at the forefront of this cause and as young people, our time is now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Organizers billed the big Saturday afternoon demonstration not as a protest of Gray\u2019s death, but a \u201cvictory rally\u201d that city leaders have perhaps listened to their cries. Smaller groups of what looked to be several hundred gathered all around the city and made their way through the streets to join the thousands at the main rally.<\/p>\n
Chants of \u201cno justice, no peace, no racist police\u201d echoed and crowds of people, black and white, young and old, carried homemade signs calling for peace, as well as printed ones asking for justice. Others wore T-shirts that read, \u201cBlack Lives Matter,\u201d a slogan many have taken up in the fight.<\/p>\n
Gray\u2019s death happened in a majority black city where black elected officials hold the reins of political power and oversee the justice system. The police department is 48 percent black. The officers charged are racially split \u2014 three white, three black.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The American Civil Liberties Union tweeted Friday that \u201cBlack Spring has begun\u201d and called on the protesters to make a stand. On Friday morning, four days after the most violent civil unrest since the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King in 1968, State\u2019s Attorney Marilyn Mosby had stood nearby before a bank of television … Continue reading “‘Black spring has begun’”<\/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":[11595,3647,11619,157,111],"class_list":["post-18796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-united-states","tag-blacklivesmatter","tag-baltimore","tag-black-spring","tag-racism","tag-riots"],"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\/18796","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=18796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18798,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18796\/revisions\/18798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}