FERGUSON, Mo., (Reuters) – Demonstrators shut down a shopping mall near Ferguson, Missouri, at the start of the holiday shopping season yesterday as protests over the killing of an unarmed black teen by a white police officer turned against some retailers around the country.
After a mostly quiet Thanksgiving Day, protesters were out in force again on Friday to decry Monday’s decision by a grand jury not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the Aug. 9 shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in the St. Louis suburb.
At locations around the country, protesters said they were encouraging a boycott of Black Friday to highlight the purchasing power of black Americans and to draw links between economic inequality and racial inequality.
“Voicing your opinion is not enough,” said Sergio Uzurin, a protester in front of Macy’s flagship store in New York. “You have to disrupt business as usual for this to happen and that’s the only thing that’s ever made change. It’s the real way democracies function.”
The Ferguson shooting, which has renewed a debate over race relations in the United States and the treatment of blacks and other minorities by police, has triggered months of sometimes violent protests in Ferguson and sympathy protests elsewhere.
On Friday, more than 200 people in New York sought to disrupt shopping with a protest in front of the Macy’s store in Herald Square and marched into the ground floor as staff and shoppers looked on in apparent surprise.
Similar protests were also staged in other cities including Chicago, Los Angeles and Oakland, California, on Black Friday, when many retailers offer deep discounts and shoppers traditionally turn out in droves.
At the Galleria near St. Louis, demonstrators chanted “No Black Friday” before briefly lying down on the second floor, leading officials to effectively shut down the mall for the rest of the day. Security guards stopped anyone from entering the shopping center, telling disappointed bargain-hunters that it was closed for the rest of the day.
Eddie Cox, the 23-year-old assistant manager of a Lids baseball cap store, said he watched with pride as the demonstrators marched past his shop.
Cox, who is black, said his store was seeing only about a fifth as many Black Friday sales as last year due to the call by activists for a boycott.
