By Michael Hernandez
ST. LOUIS, Missouri, United States
A third day of planned protests in St. Louis drew thousands to the city where they participated in acts of civil disobedience and derailed a series of planned interfaith speeches.
The protests are part of four days of planned action that organizers have called "Ferguson October" following the shooting death of Michael Brown, 18, by white police officer Darren Wilson in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson in August. Brown's death set off weeks of mass protests that drew thousands to the area, and which have continued at a smaller level since.
Vonderrit Myers, also 18, was shot and killed by an off-duty officer last Wednesday. It was the fourth shooting of a young black male by police in the area in two months.
Approximately two hundred protesters gathered in the Shaw neighborhood of south St. Louis and split into two groups to march through the city. One group turned an intersection into a makeshift playground where soccer balls and footballs were tossed, people jumped rope, and used chalk to write political messages on the pavement.
“They think it’s a game. They think it’s a joke,” they chanted.
Police blocked off nearby streets, but refrained from engaging with the protesters.
After more than two miles of marching both groups converged near St. Louis University and marched on the campus.
More than a thousand people, including some university students who spontaneously joined the group as it made its way down a main walkway, occupied the area around the university’s clock tower. As they walked on the clocktower and gathered there they yelled "“out of the dorms and into the streets.”
At the time of filing, they remained there without police interference. Demonstrators observed four mins of silence for Myers some with fists in the air as a sign of resistence.
Earlier Sunday, hundreds gathered at St. Louis University's Chaifetz Arena for planned interfaith speeches by interfaith and community leaders, including activist and academic Cornel West.
Before West could take the podium, anger boiled over as youth within the crowd dismissed earlier speeches, and called for their voices to be heard.
“The people who want to break down racism from a philosophical level, y’all didn’t show up,” Tef Poe, a St. Louis-based rapper and activist with Hands Up United, said to rounds of cheers and applause.
A speaker who was one of those who took the stage from the crowd graphically condemned the lack of participation in streets by some of those in the audience.
Organizers have called for a fourth day of protests Monday with acts of civil disobedience scheduled to begin tomorrow morning. Additional details have yet to be released, but mass arrests are expected
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