Chicago activists launch second day of protests in response to Eric Garner decision
Demonstrators in Chicago are prepping for a second day of protests after shutting down Lake Shore Drive on Thursday in response to a group of New York grand jurors dismissing charges against the officer who fatally choked Eric Garner.
A small group of protesters gathered at about 8 a.m. at the intersection of North Milwaukee and North Ashland Avenues at West Division Street. A second gathering was planned near South State Street and Jackson Boulevard in the Loop for the early afternoon.
Hundreds of demonstrators marched in the Loop and stopped traffic on Lake Shore Drive and the Dan Ryan Expressway on Thursday to protesting a grand jury’s decision not to indict a New York City police officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner.
Those marches followed “die-ins” at the University of Chicago and at East Roosevelt Road and South Wabash Avenue. Demonstrators chanted “We can’t breathe” and “Hands up, don’t shoot,” slogans which have been rallying cries in protest of recent events in New York City and Ferguson, Missouri, respectively.
Others held signs reading with messages like “Black lives matter” and “Once again injustice.”
The civil unrest comes after both grand jury decisions to not indict police officers who took the lives of unarmed black men were released. In New York City, Eric Garner died after being placed in a chokehold by an NYPD officer. The move is illegal.
Just a week before, former Ferguson, Missouri police Officer Darren Wilson was cleared of any wrongdoing regarding the violent shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in August.
Just last month, 28-year-old Akai Gurley was shot to death by an NYPD officer in the stairwell of a dark Brooklyn housing project. In a statement released by the department regarding the incident, the city’s chief called the incident a “mistake.”
Black lives matter.
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