The chaos of Black Friday was by protesters across the country urging people to boycott the high-traffic shopping day in response to a grand jury's decision Monday not to indict white police officer, Darren Wilson, who shot and killed an 18-year-old black teen, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri.
After nights of violent protests and looting in Ferguson and surrounding areas, the Black Friday protests in Missouri were relatively calm. About two dozen people gathered at a Wal-Mart in the St. Louis suburb of Manchester chanting 'no justice, no peace, no racist police' and 'no more Black Friday,' but promptly retreated from the entrance of the store when police threatened arrest, according to news3blog.blogspot.com.
A group also circled near a Wal-Mart on West Flourrisant Ave. - the epicenter of tumultuous protests over Brown's death - calling for Wilson's arrest. And a St. Louis mall closed for a brief time as dozens of protesters moved store to store staging 'die-ins,' where they lie down on the floor like corpses, according to NBC affiliate KSDK.
Thursday night also brought 'stand up, don't shop' rallies at big box stores around St. Louis County during Thanksgiving shopping. St. Louis Police Department spokesman Rick Eckhard told NBC News Friday afternoon that there weren't any reports of arrests during any of the gatherings.
The scene was more disruptive in West Oakland, California, where about 20 people chained themselves together through the doors of a Bay Area Rapid Transit train (BART), at a station heavily used by Black Friday shoppers, forcing the station to shut down, according to a BART statement. One participant told NBC Bay Area that the group planned to stay on the tracks for four hours to symbolize the amount of time Brown's body was in the street after he was killed. The station remained closed for at least two hours and reopened around 1 p.m. (4 p.m. ET).
Protesters marching through Wicker Park in Chicago also made reference to the amount of time Brown's body was in the street, saying the would stay out for more than four hours and ask people not to shop, according to NBC Chicago. About 100 people were involved in the largely-peaceful protest, which collected supporters with the Twitter hashtags '#blackoutfriday' and '#boycottblackfriday.'
'Getting the best sales is just silly when people's lives are being wrecked every single day,' protester Heather Loring-Albright told NBC Chicago.
The same sentiment was expressed outside of one of the world's largest department stores - the flagship Macy's in New York City's Herald Square. 'Out of the store, into the streets,' about 150 protesters chanted. Some entered the department store before exiting through another set of doors. The larger group outside blocked traffic in the highly-congested Herald Square before moving onto the sidewalk and starting to march in the direction of Times Square, according to NBC New York.
In Washington D.C., some people outside of a Wal-Mart were demanding greater wages, while others were protesting the Ferguson decision. 'Black Lives Matter' signs sprinkled a group of people who were chanting, 'Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart, you can't hide. We can see your greedy side.'
Meanwhile, some chants easily covered both causes: 'What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!' one woman yelled through a bullhorn.
NBC News' Katie Wall and Ribka Gemilangsari contributed to this report. news3blog.blogspot.com also contributed.
First published November 28 2014, 1:48 PM
Elisha Fieldstadt is a staff writer for NBC News. She started this role in January of 2014. Fieldstadt is responsible for reporting and writing news and enterprise stories. Fieldstadt joined NBCNews.com as an intern in June 2013 from Baruch College, where she was editor-in-chief of Dollars & Sense magazine. In that role, Fieldstadt edited, wrote and curated multimedia and feature stories for the online magazine. Dollars & Sense recently earned a Columbia Scholastic Press Association Gold Crown award.Fieldstadt is a Harnisch Scholar and a member of the Reynolds Center’s Circle of Achievement. She lives in New York City.
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