Missouri march seeks justice for black teen killed by police

n">(Reuters) - Activists protesting police treatment of black Americans concluded a 120-mile (190-km) march from Ferguson, Missouri to the Missouri governor's mansion on Friday, ending a 'journey for justice' tied to the police killing of an unarmed black teenager.
More than 100 protesters shouted "hands up, don't shoot" and other slogans as they rallied in the rotunda of the state Capitol in Jefferson City.
The demonstrators walked through a cold rain as they concluded a march that began Nov. 29 and was organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Missouri Governor Jay Nixon said in a statement Friday he had met with NAACP leaders and was "confident that together we can make meaningful change... and build a future of greater peace, opportunity and fairness for all.”
Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said he would also meet with NAACP leaders later on Friday.
The civil rights group organized the march after a grand jury declined to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for shooting to death unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown.
In an atmosphere at times reminiscent of the civil rights marches of the 1960s, the protesters said they encountered counter-demonstrators and hecklers along the way.
"For many, the fight has never ended," said NAACP staff member Jamiah Adams, who participated in the march.
In the small town of Rosebud, Adams said a group that included Ku Klux Klan members met the marchers with racist signs, epithets and fried chicken and watermelon, foods typically associated with racist stereotypes of black people. Someone broke a window of a bus accompanying the marchers in an incident that remains unexplained, she said.
The NAACP is calling for a number of changes, including the ouster of the Ferguson police chief, an end to racial profiling by police and the demilitarization of local police authorities.
Brown's Aug. 9 death, and the lack of charges against Wilson, have prompted expanding protests over what activists say is deeply engrained hostile treatment of African Americans by police, and an unequal justice system that refuses to hold police accountable.
In recent days, protests have spread to many major U.S. cities, after a grand jury in Staten Island decided not to indict a white police officer in the New York City borough in the death of a 43-year-old black man suspected of illegally selling cigarettes. Eric Garner died after being placed in a chokehold as officers tried to arrest him.
(Reporting by Carey Gillam in Kansas City, Mo.; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Christian Plumb)

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U.S. Black Friday shopping marked by thinner crowds, protests

By Nandita Bose and Nathan Layne
WEST HARTFORD, Conn./CHICAGO Fri Nov 28, 2014 6:14pm EST

1 of 15. A Walmart employee helps a customer with a 50' TV on sale for $218 on Black Friday in Broomfield, Colorado November 28, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Rick Wilking
WEST HARTFORD, Conn./CHICAGO (Reuters) - Mall crowds were relatively thin on Black Friday in a sign of what has become the new normal in U.S. holiday shopping: the mad rush is happening the night of Thanksgiving and more consumers are picking up deals online.
Across the United States, shoppers were greeted by protesters at hundreds of stores - some calling for higher wages at Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N), others protesting the decision of a grand jury not to indict a white police officer in the August shooting of an 18-year-old unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri.
Most major retailers now open Thursday evening and are extending holiday deals rather than limiting them to one day. The result is a quieter experience on a day that has traditionally kicked off the holiday shopping season, and often drawn chaotic crowds.
Black Friday has ranked as the busiest U.S. shopping day in terms of sales and traffic since 2005, according to ShopperTrak. But as demand shifts to Thursday and even earlier in the month, the research firm predicts that "Super Saturday" on Dec. 20 will be the most active day this year.
"It just looks like any other weekend," said Angela Olivera, a 32-year-old housewife shopping for children's clothing at the Westfarms Mall near Hartford, Connecticut. "The kind of crowds we usually see are missing and this is one of the biggest malls here. I think people are just not spending a lot."
The crowds normally reserved for Black Friday morning appeared on Thursday night. For instance, more than 15,000 people lined up for the opening of the flagship store of Macy's Inc (M.N) in New York on Thursday. Retailers also said they were capturing more of the holiday budget online.
Shares of Macy's, Wal-Mart and Target Corp (TGT.N) closed from 2 to 3 percent higher on Friday as investors were encouraged by the long lines on Thursday night and executives made bullish comments about demand. Lower gasoline prices also helped boost the shares, analysts said.
"It's off to a good start," said Charlie O'Shea, a retail analyst at Moody's Investors Service, about the shopping season after visiting nearly two dozen stores in northern New Jersey over the past two days.
In downtown Chicago, police arrested 11 people associated with workers' rights group OUR Walmart for blocking traffic in front of a Walmart store. The protest was one of 1,600 planned across the United States by the group, which is pushing for higher wages and benefits for the retailer's employees.
"Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart you're no good. Treat your workers like you should," a crowd of several dozen shouted outside the store.
Wal-Mart spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said: "The crowds are mostly made up of paid union demonstrators, and they do not represent the views of the 1.3 million associates" who work for the company, the largest private employer in the United States.
Buchanan also said one of the demonstrators hit a customer at the Chicago store, prompting a complaint to the police.
OUR Walmart representative Georges Tounou said the group carried out its protest peacefully.
Overall Black Friday online sales as of 1500 EST (2000 GMT) were up 8 percent from a year earlier, according to IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark. Online sales were up 14.3 percent on Thanksgiving Day.
Wal-Mart said Thursday was its second-highest online sales day ever after last year's Cyber Monday, which is the Monday after Thanksgiving, when online retailers promote bargains.
Target CEO Brian Cornell said his company rang up a record day of online sales on Thursday, and was seeing brisk demand in its stores. He said the company was selling 1,800 televisions a minute between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Thursday night.
Heavy traffic caused the Best Buy Co Inc (BBY.N) website to crash for a little over an hour earlier on Friday, but as of afternoon it was back up and running, a company spokesman said.
The National Retail Federation is projecting that sales for November and December will rise 4.1 percent to $616.9 billion, which would mark the most bountiful holiday season in three years. Holiday sales grew 3.1 percent in 2013.
Some shoppers said the price of gasoline - expected to go even lower after the price of crude oil fell to a multi-year low - could make them more inclined to spend.
"My budget is pretty tight this year and gas is a tremendous expense because I have to drive my daughter around a lot," Kristen Akeley, 46, who works at an elementary school, said while shopping for clothes at a Target in Connecticut.
"My gas expense has fallen from $150 a week to $80 a week and that is big savings at this time of the year."
(Additional reporting by Beth Pinsker in Ventnor, New Jersey; Editing by Jilian Mincer, Paul Simao and Matthew Lewis)

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Ferguson police officer who killed black teen resigns from force

By Daniel Wallis and Edward McAllister
FERGUSON, Mo. Sat Nov 29, 2014 11:01pm EST

Officer Darren Wilson is pictured in this undated handout evidence photo from the August 9 Ferguson Police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, released by the St. Louis County Prosecutor's Office on November 24, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/St. Louis County Prosecutor's Office/Handout via Reuters
FERGUSON, Mo. (Reuters) - The white police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager in a St. Louis suburb has resigned, his lawyer said on Saturday, as activists set out on a 120-mile (193-km) march to protest the killing and a grand jury's decision not to indict him.
The resignation of Darren Wilson from the Ferguson, Missouri, police force comes nearly four months after he killed 18-year-old Michael Brown and days after the announcement that he would not face criminal charges.
The incident, which has led to months of sometimes violent protests in Ferguson, has reignited a debate over race relations and the use of police force in the United States.
Neil Bruntrager, an attorney for Wilson, confirmed that the officer had submitted his resignation, a move that was long anticipated, no matter the outcome of the grand jury's deliberations.
"In terms of his safety, it is probably the best thing for him," said Cynthia Burnes, 26, a nurse's assistant from St. Louis who was among about 50 people gathered in front of the Ferguson police headquarters on Saturday evening. "He is black-listed from this moment on."
A man was arrested at the scene after he knelt in the middle of the street with his hands raised, chanting "Hands up, don't shoot," a common refrain at Ferguson protests.
In a letter published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Wilson said he had been told that "my continued employment may put the residents and police officers of the City of Ferguson at risk, which is a circumstance that I cannot allow."
Wilson, who said he was acting in self-defense when he shot Brown, said he wanted to wait until after the grand jury's decision before he made his decision to resign, according to the letter.
After a night of arson and looting in Ferguson following the decision, demonstrations this week spread to other major U.S. cities, with some of the protests targeting shopping malls on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, as the holiday shopping season got under way.
On Saturday, activists shifted gears by setting off on a seven-day march from Ferguson to Jefferson City, the state capital. The march, reminiscent of the civil rights marches of the 1960s, was organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
The NAACP is calling for a reform of police practices, a new police chief in Ferguson and a national law to prevent racial profiling by police.
More than 150 people set out on the "Journey for Justice" from the Canfield Green Apartments, near the spot where Brown was shot and killed, with some marchers singing the decades-old protest song "We Shall Overcome."
Sandra Henry, 53, a registered nurse from St. Louis, said she was marching to press for reform of police practices.
"This isn't just about St. Louis. We are speaking for other cities, other countries too," Henry said.
All told, about 100 marchers were expected to make the entire journey, with about 1,000 expected to be part of the final leg of the march, said NAACP staff member Jamiah Adams.
By nightfall, a dozen people had gathered at the Ferguson police station, the scene of some of this week's worst riots. No police officers were standing out front but a small crew of national guard lingered in the back.
The shooting and its aftermath are taking a toll on the state's finances. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has called for the state assembly to convene for a special session to approve more funds for the Missouri Highway Patrol and the National Guard after months of protests over Brown's death.
In New York, activists rallied in Harlem on Saturday to draw parallels between Brown's death and what they see as other cases of unjustified police violence.
(Additional reporting by Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, N.C., and Mary Wisniewski in Chicago; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Clelia Oziel, Dan Grebler, Gunna Dickson and Clarence Fernandez)

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St. Louis-area mall closes on Black Friday as Ferguson protests spread

AppId is over the quota
By Daniel Wallis and Edward McAllister
FERGUSON, Mo. Fri Nov 28, 2014 6:57pm EST

1 of 2. A protester holds a sign outside a burning Walgreens drug store after a grand jury returned no indictment in the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, November 24, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Adrees Latif
FERGUSON, Mo. (Reuters) - Demonstrators shut down a shopping mall near Ferguson, Missouri, at the start of the holiday shopping season on Friday 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.
"The business side of me kinda hates it, but at the same time, the young, activist, pro-conscious part of me loves every bit of this," Cox said. "It's a really cool time to be young, black and American."
Ferguson itself was peaceful for a second day in a row, after more than 100 arrests earlier in the week, when some demonstrators reacted to the grand jury's decision by looting or burning businesses, and officers in riot gear used tear gas to disperse crowds.
On Friday, police briefly reopened West Florissant Avenue, a main thoroughfare where many of the damaged or destroyed businesses are located. That allowed clean-up efforts to begin there and gave residents a glimpse of more burned-out stores including a clothing store and an Enterprise car rental outlet. By nightfall, the strip was closed again.
Near police headquarters, the scene of the worst violence earlier in the week, residents painted murals on the boarded-up windows of stores. Burned-out cars at one car dealership on West Florissant were loaded onto the back of flatbed trucks.
'ANY RESOURCES POSSIBLE'
In the neighboring town of Dellwood, the mayor held a news conference in which he called for state and federal aid for his city, where 13 businesses were burned on Monday and five were looted.
"I am asking that Dellwood not be forgotten," Mayor Reggie Jones said. "I am asking for any resources possible to help us rebuild."
About 16 people were arrested after chaining themselves to a train during a demonstration at a Bay Area Rapid Transit rail station in Oakland over the Missouri grand jury’s decision, a BART spokeswoman said.
In the U.S. capital, striking Wal-Mart employees dominated a Black Friday protest at Washington’s Union Station, said a spokeswoman for the organizer, OUR Walmart.
A Walmart store near Ferguson decided to cancel Black Friday sales, and merchandise was moved to other locations in the St. Louis area, employees said.
(Additional reporting by Emily Flitter in Ferguson, Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles, and Barbara Goldberg in New York; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Will Dunham)

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U.S. Black Friday shopping marked by thinner crowds, protests

AppId is over the quota
By Nandita Bose and Nathan Layne
WEST HARTFORD, Conn./CHICAGO Fri Nov 28, 2014 6:14pm EST

1 of 15. A Walmart employee helps a customer with a 50' TV on sale for $218 on Black Friday in Broomfield, Colorado November 28, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Rick Wilking
WEST HARTFORD, Conn./CHICAGO (Reuters) - Mall crowds were relatively thin on Black Friday in a sign of what has become the new normal in U.S. holiday shopping: the mad rush is happening the night of Thanksgiving and more consumers are picking up deals online.
Across the United States, shoppers were greeted by protesters at hundreds of stores - some calling for higher wages at Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N), others protesting the decision of a grand jury not to indict a white police officer in the August shooting of an 18-year-old unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri.
Most major retailers now open Thursday evening and are extending holiday deals rather than limiting them to one day. The result is a quieter experience on a day that has traditionally kicked off the holiday shopping season, and often drawn chaotic crowds.
Black Friday has ranked as the busiest U.S. shopping day in terms of sales and traffic since 2005, according to ShopperTrak. But as demand shifts to Thursday and even earlier in the month, the research firm predicts that "Super Saturday" on Dec. 20 will be the most active day this year.
"It just looks like any other weekend," said Angela Olivera, a 32-year-old housewife shopping for children's clothing at the Westfarms Mall near Hartford, Connecticut. "The kind of crowds we usually see are missing and this is one of the biggest malls here. I think people are just not spending a lot."
The crowds normally reserved for Black Friday morning appeared on Thursday night. For instance, more than 15,000 people lined up for the opening of the flagship store of Macy's Inc (M.N) in New York on Thursday. Retailers also said they were capturing more of the holiday budget online.
Shares of Macy's, Wal-Mart and Target Corp (TGT.N) closed from 2 to 3 percent higher on Friday as investors were encouraged by the long lines on Thursday night and executives made bullish comments about demand. Lower gasoline prices also helped boost the shares, analysts said.
"It's off to a good start," said Charlie O'Shea, a retail analyst at Moody's Investors Service, about the shopping season after visiting nearly two dozen stores in northern New Jersey over the past two days.
In downtown Chicago, police arrested 11 people associated with workers' rights group OUR Walmart for blocking traffic in front of a Walmart store. The protest was one of 1,600 planned across the United States by the group, which is pushing for higher wages and benefits for the retailer's employees.
"Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart you're no good. Treat your workers like you should," a crowd of several dozen shouted outside the store.
Wal-Mart spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said: "The crowds are mostly made up of paid union demonstrators, and they do not represent the views of the 1.3 million associates" who work for the company, the largest private employer in the United States.
Buchanan also said one of the demonstrators hit a customer at the Chicago store, prompting a complaint to the police.
OUR Walmart representative Georges Tounou said the group carried out its protest peacefully.
Overall Black Friday online sales as of 1500 EST (2000 GMT) were up 8 percent from a year earlier, according to IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark. Online sales were up 14.3 percent on Thanksgiving Day.
Wal-Mart said Thursday was its second-highest online sales day ever after last year's Cyber Monday, which is the Monday after Thanksgiving, when online retailers promote bargains.
Target CEO Brian Cornell said his company rang up a record day of online sales on Thursday, and was seeing brisk demand in its stores. He said the company was selling 1,800 televisions a minute between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Thursday night.
Heavy traffic caused the Best Buy Co Inc (BBY.N) website to crash for a little over an hour earlier on Friday, but as of afternoon it was back up and running, a company spokesman said.
The National Retail Federation is projecting that sales for November and December will rise 4.1 percent to $616.9 billion, which would mark the most bountiful holiday season in three years. Holiday sales grew 3.1 percent in 2013.
Some shoppers said the price of gasoline - expected to go even lower after the price of crude oil fell to a multi-year low - could make them more inclined to spend.
"My budget is pretty tight this year and gas is a tremendous expense because I have to drive my daughter around a lot," Kristen Akeley, 46, who works at an elementary school, said while shopping for clothes at a Target in Connecticut.
"My gas expense has fallen from $150 a week to $80 a week and that is big savings at this time of the year."
(Additional reporting by Beth Pinsker in Ventnor, New Jersey; Editing by Jilian Mincer, Paul Simao and Matthew Lewis)

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