WASHINGTON, August 24 (RIA Novosti), Lyudmila Chernova - Hundreds of peaceful protesters have taken to the streets in Washington, DC to show support for Michael Brown and stand in solidarity with the people of Ferguson, Missouri.
The protestors demanded the arrest of the police officer who shot dead an unarmed African-American teenager two weeks ago, as well as the demilitarization of the police, and the institutionalization of civilian review boards of the police with the right to hire and fire.
Ferguson has witnessed more than a week of violent demonstrations following the shooting of 18-year old Michael Brown by the police officer. The situation in Ferguson has once again brought up the issues of racial discrimination, human rights violations as well as an increased militarization of law enforcement. Law enforcers have been criticized for bringing military tactics to civilian protests, toting assault rifles and using tear gas, rubber bullets and other heavy-handed measures.
The protest began at 7 p.m. local time (2:20 GMT) at one of the central squares of the city, Mt. Vernon. After a short rally, the crowd marched to Chinatown carrying banners and shouting slogans. The banners read "Stop Racist Police Terror," ''Justice for Mike," "Stand With the People of Ferguson," "My Life Matters" and others.
Eugene Puryear, the D.C. Statehood Green Party's nominee for At-Large Member of City Council and one of the organizers of the rally, stated that American citizens have come to the rally as they are very concerned about police terrorism, racism, poverty and injustice in the United States.
"These are evils and fruits of American capitalism," Puryear told RIA Novosti. "This rally is an opportunity to support Michael Brown and people of Ferguson, and also to show the country and the world that black people in the United States, as well as white, Arab, and Latino people white people black who are united with us are not going to stand down this time. We are going to keep standing up until we make change."
Puryear believes that militarized police in Washington should be eliminated right away.
"We can also deal in a real way with the poverty and deprivation that exist in many communities and cause so much tension between the police and those who they are policing, those who they are fencing in. They don't want to solve social problems in America, they want to control them,” he said
Another organizer, George Gilbert Jr., assistant pastor at Holy Trinity United Baptist Church, said that what happened to Michael Brown is a norm for an Affrican-American man in the United States, so it was not something surprising.
"Every young man or a young boy in America has to face racial profiling by cops every single day," Gilbert told RIA Novosti.
However, he offered some solutions to the existing problems.
"There has to be some type of a mandate that police officers wear cameras on their clothes so they would cut down on their racial behavior," Gilbert proposed. "Besides, there has to be retraining for all the departments in America."
He believes that a lot of ex-military are being hired at the police.
"When men and women return from the war, they get jobs as police officers very easily and very readily," Gilbert explained. "They come with that same mentality of the war zone, bring that to streets, and treat our black people like war time criminals."
Gilbert emphasized that people are resilient now, and that America has done the worst thing by waking up the young people, the hip-hop generation.
"They have risen, and ready to move, ready to fight, ready to march. This is the worst case for racist America," he asserted.
According to the organizers, more events and rallies are planned for the next week.
