Civil Rights/Equal Rights

On the 15th of December, DC Ferguson civil rights protesters asssembled in Chinatown for the nightly round of street blockades. This time one of the targets was I-395 and NY Ave. For the second night in a row police attempted to bypass the legally required "3 warning" rule for mass arrests. This time they tried to say that warnings given at the 395 tunnel were still valid in Chinatown and could be counted against the required three warnings.They tried to go straight to the 3ed warning and got out zip ties, something not previously seen at these protests. Finally someone got police chief Lanier on the line, she said three new warnings were required at every intersection so the cops were thwarted in their hoped-for arrests.

On the 13th of December, a march estimated by some at around 50,000 people from Freedom Plaza to the US Capitol protested the recent string of police murders of unarmed young African-American men. The "Hands up, don't shoot" and "I can't breathe" chants were heard often, referring to the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson and the chokehold death of Eric Garner in NYC.

Video-Scenes from Justice For All march

On the 10th of December, the mothers of a number of young men slain by police spoke to a large crowd outside the Department of Justice. One was from nearby PG county. I heard speech after speech about police responding to attempts to surrender or otherwise non-threatening young men with a fusillade of gunshots. The words of the mothers of the fallen were folllowed by a march through the streets to the White House, shutting down traffic for blocks.

Stirring 1 min 20 sec video

Same video on Liveleak due to outage at Archive.org caused by Pacific storm

On the 8th of December, civil rights protesters shut down streets in evening rush hour for the 6th day in a row since a grand jury refused to indict NY cops for the chokehold death of Eric Garner. This is now the 3ed week of frequent street protests since St Louis cop Darren Wilson was also not indicted in the shooting death Michael Brown. At around 8PM protesters blocked the 14th st Bridge, stopping traffic there for the third time in a week.