Protests erupted across the nation Thursday evening, a day after a Staten Island grand jury failed to indict a white police officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner.
From New York City; Washington, D.C. and Boston to Oakland, demonstrators are chanting, blocking traffic and urging police reform in the aftermath of the killing of two unarmed black men this summer by white police officers.
{mosads}A New York grand jury decided not to charge New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo Wednesday in the death of Garner, who was placed in a chokehold and said “I can’t breathe,” as he was wrested to the ground for resisting arrest.
In New York, crowds of protesters laid down in an intersection outside the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, swarmed the Brooklyn Bridge and converged outside the terminal to the Staten Island Ferry in southern Manhattan.
“I’m college educated, and I still have to be seen like I’m a threat due to my skin color,” a 22-year-old protester who joined demonstrating on Brooklyn’s Fulton Mall told CNN. “We have to slow down everything in Brooklyn and Manhattan. if they keep killing us, the system doesn’t deserve to keep going. It’s the best we can do right now.”
About 100 protesters in Washington, D.C., staged a “die-in” just a block from the White House.
Police also blocked traffic as demonstrators marched through downtown Dallas.