FERGUSON, Mo. - After two nights of nearly absolute calm in this St. Louis suburb, demonstrators took to the streets again late Friday to protest what they condemned as pervasive police misconduct. Although the authorities arrested more than a dozen people, the demonstration was far from a repeat of the rioting early in the week, which was defined by gunfire, looting and arson.
Instead, protesters opted for a common and less provocative tactic: blocking traffic along South Florissant Road near Ferguson's police station, which is now protected by the St. Louis County police and members of the Missouri National Guard.
Demonstrators marched in front of the same shops whose windows were shattered during protests earlier this week after a grand jury declined to indict a white police officer, Darren Wilson, in the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. They also walked past the very spot where two parked police cruisers had been hit with rocks and set on fire.
The protesters marched on Friday evening along South Florissant and briefly halted traffic at an intersection as National Guard soldiers looked on with blank expressions. Some demonstrators approached the soldiers and screamed: 'This is America!'
Then the group reversed course and headed toward the police station, where officers clad in riot gear met them in the street. A police officer used a loudspeaker to warn the demonstrators that they faced arrest, and they eventually moved to the sidewalks.
But later, after repeated standoffs in the street, the police lost patience and swarmed onto South Florissant to make arrests. Glass shattered onto the road, and officers angrily ordered people to the sidewalks. A police spokesman said the authorities made 16 arrests.
Following the arrests, protesters loudly criticized the police as overly aggressive.
'This was a peaceful protest,' said Adrien West, a resident of nearby Florissant who stood with a duct-taped, handwritten sign calling for peace and justice. 'There was no need to arrest anybody. All the police is doing is just cultivating more and more protesters.'
The evening's protests again demonstrated that the so-called Ferguson movement touches on issues that go well beyond this city of about 21,000 people. On Friday night, South Florissant hosted two distinct groups of protesters; one was a loose coalition consisting mostly of area residents, while the other included many out-of-towners who were affiliated with the Revolutionary Communist Party.
In addition to the traditional rallying cries of the Ferguson protesters - like 'No justice, no peace!' - some demonstrators also chanted, 'The only solution is a Communist revolution!'
Even though the disparate groups briefly marched together, they broke apart at the time of the night's first serious confrontation with the police, as some urged their fellow protesters to get out of the street.
'Hey family, we need everybody over here in this parking lot real quick,' said John Fairhurst, 35, of Boston, who wore a Guy Fawkes mask and a keffiyeh and said he was with the International Organization of the Million Mask March. He and some local protesters said they did not want to get teargassed.
But the group shouting Communist slogans was defiant. 'In the streets!' one of the protesters from that group yelled back at Mr. Fairhurst. Another shouted, 'Stay and fight!'
The arrests on Friday followed two nights of minimal conflict between the authorities and the demonstrators. Only two people were arrested on Wednesday, and no one was detained on Thursday.
The question had been how long the informal truce would last. Peaceful demonstrations had been held earlier Friday at shopping malls across greater St. Louis.
Amid those protests, and hours before the arrests here, the police reopened West Florissant Avenue, where some of the worst violence took place on Monday, to limited traffic. But there were no protests on that street Friday night, because the police announced that it would remain closed between 5 p.m. and 7 a.m. 'until further notice.'
Posted by Unknown on Saturday, November 29, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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