LaQuan McDonald’s Chicago Protestors March on MI

The protest drew the attention of several high-profile figures who have previously campaigned for the movement. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, former mayoral candidate and Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, and U.S. Reps.

This week, the long-anticipated release of the dashcam video led to protests that, according to WBEZ, sought “to honor McDonald and protest police brutality”.

There was an element of the surreal throughout the day.

In response, police closed northbound Michigan Avenue and later shut down the southbound direction, the Tribune reported.

“The protest was a call for people to boycott the business district because the whole political system is involved: They sat on the video for a whole year”. Targeting commerce, some protesters say, is part of a tradition started by Martin Luther King Jr., who said in his last speech before being assassinated in 1968 that civil rights supporters should “redistribute the pain” by boycotting corporations like Coca-Cola.

“We want to show them how it’s done in Chicago”, one speaker shouted into a megaphone in front of Water Tower Place. “Let them just feel the empty cash registers”, the speaker shouted. At one point, protesters tried to get in into the store Tommy Bahama, but were stopped by police.

Store employees were directing shoppers to exit from side doors.

Not everyone was enthusiastic about the tactic.

So the young people know that we, the old guard, we support them.

“I expect this will be bigger than the others”.

Critics of the police department and Cook County prosecutors have questioned why it took investigators 13 months to bring charges in the case of the shooting of Laquan McDonald and to release the video.

Marchers carried signs calling for justice for McDonald and for the creation of a community police accountability council. But you have to understand it. Again, effective leadership is knowing how to direct and redirect it. That’s what we need to be focusing on.

Tensions flared up in the Midwestern city after officials released a graphic video on Tuesday showing Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke shot McDonald 16 times after the teenager walked away from him. She also added that they wanted to make sure they were following all the rules so the indictment would not be dismissed due to tainted evidence. “Don’t go halfway, go all the way”, Johnson said.

Meanwhile in Minneapolis, hundreds of people filled a church to pay their respects to a man whose death in an unrelated confrontation with police sparked more than a week of ongoing protests.

Demonstrators scheduled the march on Friday, the traditional beginning of the holiday shopping season that packs Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile. The other demonstrations have been largely peaceful.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton also weighed in, saying McDonald’s family and Chicago residents “deserve justice and accountability”.

If Laquan McDonald is Chicago’s most famous murder victim-assuming his shooting was murder-Tyshawn Lee is the city’s second best-known victim.

“The path forward is to keep people united, to keep people watching out for each other, to try to teach people to treat each other with respect and kindness”.

What continues to roil the black community is that police and prosecutor Alvarez waited 400 days to release the tape, well after a spring election in which Emanuel faced stiff competition and had to undergo the first runoff election in Chicago history, an eyebrow-raising moment for an incumbent in a city renowned for its “machine”-like politics”. And they have asked why Van Dyke continued to collect a paycheck for more than a year after he shot McDonald near 41st Street and Pulaski Road. He is being held without bond, NBC News reports. When he turned toward one officer, he shot the teen 16 times, 15 after the youth had fallen.