More than a dozen people were arrested Wednesday during a protest that attempted to shut down Interstate 70 in what organizers called an act of civil disobedience demanding justice for Michael Brown.
Michael McMillan, president and CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, was among the first handful of arrests – along with Rev. Larry Rice.
About 100 police officers lined the on and off ramps to Interstate 70 at Hanley Road, several dressed in riot gear. When the protest began at 3 p.m., several young people lay on Hanley Road at the approach to the highway. All were arrested, as well as Rhea Willis, a special education teacher and former board member for the Northeast Fire Protection District in Normandy.
“We demand justice,” Willis said before the protest began. “This is the history of St. Louis. It’s always been discriminatory, and it’s time to stop. We will continue to protest until justice is met. We are not going to end this.”
As the protest started, police called over the intercom that people could not block the ramps to the interstate or the intersection at Hanley Road. After the first arrests, protesters moved to the sidewalks and Hanley median.
However, police soon announced that everyone – including members of the media – had to leave the area or face arrest. When protesters refused to leave, police selected certain members from the crowd standing on the median and sidewalks, chased them down and arrested them.
Police chased a few people into the BP gas station at the intersection and tackled them in front of car owners pumping gas. People were screaming and running as police ran into the crowds, not knowing who was being targeted.
A reporter for The American had to leave the area at 4 p.m. to meet print deadline. While leaving the public parking lot by the North Hanley Metro Station, about five St. Louis County Police officers were chasing a young African-American man, who had been one of the loudest protesters. They finally caught him on the sidewalk near the Metro stop – far from the highway – and then tackled him to the ground and handcuffed him.
Eric E. Vickers, one of the organizers of the shutdown, said at 4 p.m. that he expected the situation to escalate.
Amir Brandy wore his black T-shirt with “Peacekeepers” printed in white and watched police tear through the gas station.
“They are stopping the people from peacefully protesting,” Brandy said. “Nobody is going out on the highway, so up until that point they are within the guidelines of the law.”
Brandy has been out on West Florissant Avenue since the protests began, following Michael Brown’s death on Aug. 9, he said.
“You see a reflection of what we’ve been seeing in Ferguson continuously – law enforcement disallowing the public to peacefully protest,” he said.
At a press conference Monday, protest leaders said the shutdown was a response to Gov. Jay Nixon’s “moral ineptness” and his refusal to remove St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch from Brown’s case when he had the power to do so. State Sen. Jamilah Nasheed submitted more than 120,000 signatures from people asking for a special prosecutor.
“Highway 70 is a direct result of their actions,” said Zaki Baruti, of the Justice for Michael Brown Leadership Coalition, “because they have refused to hear the pleas of the people.”
The coalition’s immediate demand is for the appointment of a special prosecutor in Brown’s case. Brown, an unarmed teen who had just graduated from Normandy High School, was shot and killed by a Ferguson police officer on Aug. 9.
St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch is responsible for bringing charges against the police officer, Darren Wilson. Vickers said McCulloch should recuse himself from the case, pointing to his past failures to charge police officers in other abuse-of-force cases.
Express Scripts currently sits at the northeast part of the Hanley intersection. However in 2000, it was a Jack-In-The-Box where two unarmed black men, while in their vehicle, were gunned down by police officers. McCulloch took no action against the officers in that case.
“When that case was presented to him with an FBI investigation showing that those police officers lied, Bob McCulloch took no action,” Vickers said. “Consequently, there is no confidence at all that the community has that he will fairly prosecute this case.”
Vickers said they also hope to show young African Americans how civil disobedience can be used as a means to justice.
“I want to thank the youth leadership that has come to the forefront,” he said. “Our obligation is to support them, to use our experience in civil disobedience to help bring forward their desire to change the system.”
This is the first action in civil disobedience, Vickers said. Their actions will escalate if their demand for a special prosecutor and other demands for “social and economic justice solutions” are not met.
Indeed, the shutdown action started to spread on Wednesday, according to numerous reports on social media. Many protestors from I-70 moved to the Ferguson Police Department, where they blocked off South Florissant Road, forcing a faceoff with police that was broken up by a thunderstorm.
There were also reports of brief highway shutdown on I-64 in the city of St. Louis near the Saint Louis Science Center.
