'Weekend of resistance' in St. Louis gets off to peaceful start

Hundreds gathered in downtown St. Louis on Saturday morning for a second day of organized rallies to protest the death of Michael Brown at the hands of a Ferguson officer and other recent fatal police shootings.

The crowd appeared larger than that seen at Friday's protests, and while the main focus of Saturday’s march, that is scheduled to wind through downtown streets for several hours, is on recent incidents of police shootings, participants embraced other causes such as gay rights and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Police officers were stationed around the area but the demonstrations appeared to go off with little incident.

The four-day “weekend of resistance” — part of what is being dubbed Ferguson October — began Friday afternoon with a march outside the St. Louis County prosecutor's office in Clayton and renewed calls for prosecutor Bob McCulloch to charge Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson police officer, over the Aug. 9 death of 18-year-old Brown, who was black and unarmed. A grand jury is currently reviewing the case.

The demonstrations in Ferguson on Friday night saw protesters stand inches from officers in riot gear before demonstrators disbursed. Many then went to the site of a separate police shooting in St. Louis. No arrests were reported.

The protests involved both local resident and those from out of town.

"It's important for this country to stand with this community," said protester Ellen Davidson of New York City, a community college administrator who was making her second trip to the area since Brown's death more than two months ago. "This community is under siege, the eyes of the world are watching."

Into early Saturday morning, many protesters moved to the St. Louis neighborhood of Shaw, where 18-year-old Vonderrit Myers, Jr. was shot dead by an off-duty white officer working for a private security firm on Wednesday. Police say Myers shot at the officer; Myers' parents say he was unarmed.

The name of that officer, who was in uniform but working off-duty for a private neighborhood security patrol, hasn't been released. Black leaders in St. Louis want the Justice Department to investigate Myers' shooting as well as that of Brown. Police said the officer fired 17 rounds after Myers shot at him; preliminary autopsy results show a shot to the head killed Myers.

While the atmosphere was at times tense on Saturday, there were none of the clashes with police that marred protests in the St. Louis area in the wake of Brown's killing. Police said as of early Saturday there had been no arrests, injuries or damage from the night's protests.

"I'm not planning to get arrested," said Davidson, who accompanied about 15 other members of Veterans for Peace from Illinois, Minnesota, New York and Tennessee. "But I do plan to do what I believe are in my rights as a protester. If I get arrested, that's on the people who arrest me."

Organizers said before the weekend that they expected 6,000 to 10,000 participants, but Friday's protest outside the county courthouse, which took place in a cold and steady rain, didn't draw nearly that amount. Later, tensions increased in Ferguson, with hundreds of protesters gathering outside the Ferguson Police Department and chanting anti-police remarks such as, "Killer cops, KKK, how many kids did you kill today?" as a wall of about 100 officers in riot gear stood impassively.

In Clayton, officers escorted the several hundred demonstrators through the suburb's downtown as they marched past high-end restaurants, jewelry stores, banks and law offices.

"We are here to demand the justice that our people have died for," chanted protest organizer Montague Simmons of the local group Organization for Black Struggle. "We are here to bring peace, to bring restoration, to lift our banners in the name of those who've been sacrificed."

Wire services