Missouri protests after murder of Michael Brown continue

This 13 October 2014 video from the USA is called Raw Coverage from the Ferguson October Protests.

Protests continue against police violence in St. Louis

13 October 2014

About two thousand people demonstrated in downtown St. Louis, Missouri on Saturday, in a protest called to mark two months since the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by police in the suburb of Ferguson.

Last week a St. Louis police officer shot and killed yet another teenager who family members say was unarmed. A preliminary autopsy showed that Vonderrit Myers Jr., 18, was killed by a downward shot to the head, indicating that he, like Brown, was likely either on the ground or surrendering. He was shot between six and seven times.

Darren Wilson, the killer of Michael Brown, remains free under police protection, and the grand jury deliberating on whether or not to press charges against him is not scheduled to issue a decision until next month. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has refused calls to replace County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch, who has strong ties to law enforcement, with a special prosecutor.

Police arrested seventeen people on Saturday night at a sit-in at the QuikTrip gas station near the area where Michael Brown was killed. Officers used pepper spray and tear gas to disperse protesters, who they said were participating in an “unlawful assembly.” A line of riot police advanced on a group of seated protesters, banging their riot batons against the ground, before carrying out mass arrests.

Protest organizers reported that a Saturday rally drew about two thousand people, significantly fewer than the six to eight thousand that they had been anticipating. The families of Michael Brown and Vonderrit Myers Jr. were present at the events but did not speak. A spokesperson for Myers’s family reiterated that the young man was unarmed when he was gunned down on Wednesday.

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Ferguson October lists its main sponsors as Hands Up United, which refers to itself as a “youth-led movement that seeks to dismantle the New Jim Crow.”

The first national demand put forward by Hands Up United is for “Obama to come to Ferguson to meet with the people whose human rights have been violated by aggressive and militarized policing.” The second is for Attorney General “Eric Holder to use the full resources and power of the Department of Justice to implement a nationwide investigation of systematic police brutality and harassment in black and brown communities.”

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The police murder of Brown was followed by a violent crackdown against peaceful protesters. The largely working-class town was placed under de facto martial law, with hundreds of police, backed by National Guard troops, attacking demonstrators with tear gas and rubber bullets and carrying out large-scale arrests. Police arrested reporters and imposed a rule that effectively invalidated the constitutionally protected freedom of assembly.

The use of machine gun-mounted armored vehicles to support police dressed in combat fatigues and pointing assault rifles at protesters shocked the country and the world. The events demonstrated the build-up of police state methods in the US, which have been prepared for use against any expression of popular opposition to the growth of social inequality and the attack on democratic rights.

CORNEL WEST ARRESTED IN FERGUSON PROTESTS After crossing the police line, activist Cornel West was arrested on Monday. Protesters gathered in downtown St. Louis, at the St. Louis Rams game, at an upscale mall and at a political fundraiser for “Moral Monday.”