WASHINGTON– Dozens of protesters gathered outside the Justice Department Wednesday to deliver a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, asking him to take stronger action against excessive use of force by police and racial profiling in Ferguson, Mo., and around the nation.
“It’s like a civil rights movement,” said Geraldine Talley Hobby, who knows racism all too well.
Hobby was one of the Norfolk 17, a group of black students that entered six previously all-white middle and high schools in Norfolk, Va. in 1959. Hobby, 12 at the time, was the only black student at Northside Junior High School when she entered 7th grade, five years before the Civil Rights Act passed.
“I’m here to represent the black youth: males, sons and daughters, uncles, aunts and grandfathers, fathers, a whole generation of people,” Hobby, now in her late 60s, said.
After the shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown on Aug. 9 by police officer Darren Wilson, the St. Louis suburb ignited with protests, some of which involved looting, vandalism and violence. While the protests in Ferguson have been peaceful in recent days, groups around the country have begun taking to the streets in sympathy, with several non-violent protests in the nation’s capital over the past week.
Demonstrators in Washington on Wednesday called for an end to police brutality and said officers responded to the disturbances in Ferguson acting more like the military than law enforcement.
“When you outfit police officers in the uniforms and with the tools of war, instead of acting like what we were taught to believe–that they’re there to protect and serve–they start acting like they’re occupying armies,” said Nathan Sheard a campaign organizer for CODEPINK, one of the groups sponsoring the rally.
A Justice Department representative passed through the barricades blocking entrance to the building to receive the letter addressing the attorney general. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, founder of the No FEAR Coalition, read aloud the groups’ demands, with the immediate arrest and prosecution of Wilson first on the list.
Holder has said he is determined to restore citizens’ confidence in police forces.
“We will continue the conversation this incident has sparked about the need to build trust between law enforcement officers and the communities they serve; to use force appropriately; and to ensure fair and equal treatment for everyone who comes into contact with the police,” the attorney general said in an Aug. 22 statement.
The Justice Department is conducting an investigation into the death of 18-year-old Brown, sending 40 FBI agents to Ferguson to question witnesses and canvas the neighborhood where the young man was shot and killed.
“Although our investigation will take time, the people of Ferguson can have confidence in the federal investigators and prosecutors who are leading this process,” Holder saidin the statement. “Our investigation will be fair, it will be thorough, and it will be independent.”
In addition to the federal probe, the St. Louis County Circuit Court has convened a grand jury to determine whether there’s enough evidence to bring charges against Wilson.
Protesters like Coleman-Adebayo said their sons and daughters live in fear of being targeted.
“Every single day of my life, I live with the realization that at any point I could receive the same phone call that Michael Brown’s mother received or Trayvon Martin or Sean Bell or Amaduo Diallo,” Coleman-Adebayo said. “I mean, the list goes on and on.”
