Protest Breaks Out in NYC! Police Shooting of Black Men is an Epidemic!
According to an RT correspondent Rebecca Myles at the scene, few thousand activists are now taking part in the march in New York united under the Black Lives Matter slogan, that started at Union Square.
Carrying Black Lives Matter theme placards dozens of local peace activists groups, such as the Granny Peace Brigade, are taking to streets of the Big Apple in rush hour chanting, “Whose streets? Our streets!”
“Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” is being shouted by the crowd as they shut down traffic to show that people “stand up against this racist system!”
The crowds grew so large that the Lincoln Tunnel and other major avenues in Manhattan were shut down by the protest.
As the march proceeded, social media users reported that the NYPD tried to block the rally.
After about half an hour, police tried to disperse the activists to make way for traffic in and around Times Square.
The NYPD have reportedly started detaining people after first threatening to arrest activists as thousands occupy downtown Manhattan. Activists and legal observers listening to police scanners tell RT there were approximately 35 arrests in Times Square.
The Stop Mass Incarceration Network, one of the NGOs organizing the march, said: “We will be letting this Racist system know that we are sick and tired of being sick and tired. You will not continue to murder us and we will not just sit back and allow you to do so!! We have nothing to lose but our chains!!”
Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, died on Tuesday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana when he was standing in the parking lot selling CDs. That night police were responding to a report that a man dressed in red used a gun to threaten people outside the convenience store.
When the officers approached Sterling, one of them grabbed the suspect and tackled him, taking him down on the hood of a silver sedan.
During the course of the interaction, the other officer aimed his gun at Sterling’s body and then fired four times. The shooting was recorded by multiple bystanders and showed the shooting to have happened at point-blank range.
The next day, on July 6, Philando Castile was shot at Falcon Heights, Minnesota after having been pulled over for a routine traffic stop. Philando Castile’s girlfriend Lavish Reynolds live-streamed the aftermath of his shooting on Facebook.
READ MORE: ‘He only did what police asked him to do’: Girlfriend’s emotional statement on Castile shooting
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