Filipino-Americans join protest marches in US

Demonstrators march in protest against a grand jury’s decision on Monday not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2014, in New York. The grand jury’s decision has inflamed racial tensions across the US. AP

LOS ANGELES—Filipino-Americans joined hundreds of protesters who took to the streets in Los Angeles on Tuesday to denounce a grand jury’s decision not to indict a white police officer who killed a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, in August.

“Filipino-American children are children of color, like Michael Brown,” said Jollene Levid, national chairperson of the feminist group Af3irm and one of about 30 Filipino-Americans who joined the protests against police killings across the United States.

“They can also be racially profiled and targeted by the police,” she said.

Police Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in a confrontation in Ferguson on Aug. 9.

Protests erupted across the country on Monday after a Missouri prosecutor announced that Wilson would not be charged for the shooting death of Brown.

Solidarity march

Levid said the Filipino-Americans joined the rally in solidarity with Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden.

“No woman should have her child’s murderer walk free,” said Levid, who marched from Leimert Park in South Los Angeles to downtown, stopping traffic at multiple locations along the way.

Another Fil-Am rallier, Art Garcia of Alliance Philippines, said his group was protesting what he described as a blatant act of injustice and racism. He also denounced the use of excessive force against protesters in Missouri.

“It reminded me of the police militarization during the Marcos regime,” said Garcia, who experienced police brutality as an anti-Marcos activist. “The Ferguson and Missouri police even bested their counterparts in Third World countries in their use of violence against demonstrators.”

Racial profiling

The civil rights group Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAAJ) called on the US Department of Justice to investigate racial profiling, excessive force and officer-involved shooting policies and practices in the Ferguson Police Department.

In a statement, AAAJ said Asian-American and Pacific Islander community members had also experienced police brutality and discrimination.

“We are saddened and angry that yet again, there will be no accountability for the fatal shooting of an African-American by law enforcement,” AAAJ said in a statement.

Protest marches sprang up in cities across the United States on Tuesday, as a huge security operation stifled clashes in Ferguson, the town at the center of the country’s latest racially charged riots.

Violent unrest erupted in the St. Louis suburb for a second night, after Monday’s decision by a grand jury not to prosecute Wilson.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon said the National Guard force in the Ferguson area had been tripled to more than 2,000 troops to back up the beleaguered local police force.

A St. Louis police patrol car was burned by protesters and the force declared the demonstration an “illegal gathering,” warning marchers and journalists alike that they faced arrest.

Armed Missouri National Guard troopers sealed off West Florissant, the road running through Ferguson that was the scene of the worst looting and arson on Monday night after the verdict was announced.

‘We will not be silenced’

At the Ferguson police station, riot police dispersed around 100 protesters chanting and waving placards, including one that read: “We will not be silenced.”

The crowd fell back toward Ferguson City Hall, where a patrol car was set on fire and riot officers fired tear gas and deployed imposing armored personnel carriers to regain control.

Crowds were smaller than they had been on Monday. But masked agitators on the fringes of the demonstration clashed with police and there were reports of looting at a pharmacy four blocks away.

“Lives and property must be protected. This community deserves to have peace,” Nixon said, as anger mounted nationwide.

Lawyers for the family of Brown denounced the prosecutor whose grand jury hearing found that Wilson had killed the 18-year-old in self-defense.

“This process is broken. This process should be indicted,” Brown family lawyer Benjamin Crump told a news conference.

Crump criticized the way Wilson had not been cross-examined when he appeared before the grand jury, which decided not to indict him.

Feared for his life

But in his first televised comments since the incident, Wilson told ABC News he had feared for his life during the confrontation, believing Brown was attempting to wrestle his gun away from him.

“I can feel his hand trying to come over my hand and get inside the trigger guard and try to shoot me with my own gun,” Wilson said.

Asked if he believed he would have acted the same way if Brown was white, Wilson responded, “No question.”

The officer said he was comfortable that he had acted correctly.

“I don’t think it’s haunting. It’s always going to be something that happened,” he said, adding that his conscience was clear because “I know I did my job right.”

Police accountability

Civil rights firebrand Al Sharpton said the Brown case renewed a nationwide fight fo greater police accountability.

“This is not a Ferguson problem … This is a problem all over the country,” Sharpton said. “We may have lost one round but the fight is not over. They have broken our hearts, but not our backs.

For many, Brown’s shooting death on Aug. 9 recalled other troubling encounters with law enforcement.

The refrain “hands up, don’t shoot” became a rallying cry for protests over police killings nationwide.

A look at some of Tuesday’s demonstrations:

New York

Thousands of people marched for a second night in Manhattan, gathering in Union Square before splitting into several smaller groups, chanting “No justice, No peace.” Some held signs saying “Jail killer cops” and “Justice for Mike Brown.”

One group marched uptown to Times Square, meandering between lanes of traffic as police followed. The protesters, who seemed to grow in number as the night wore on, disrupted traffic on the FDR Drive and congregated at the entrances to the Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges and the Queens Midtown Tunnel.

Commissioner William Bratton said police were giving protesters “breathing room.”

“As long as they remain nonviolent, and as long as they don’t engage in issues that cause fear or create vandalism, we will work with them to allow them to demonstrate,” he said.

Minneapolis

A rally in Minneapolis turned scary when a car struck a protester and then burst through a pack of others who surrounded it. A woman suffered minor injuries.

Several hundred people had gathered on Tuesday afternoon near the 3rd Precinct police outpost to show solidarity with Brown. The driver called police soon after to report the incident, and police spokesperson John Elder said the incident was under investigation.

About 200 protesters gathered on the state Capitol steps in St. Paul and marched without incident.

California

A few hundred protesters took to the streets, engaging police in a standoff at a freeway off-ramp and surrounding a Highway Patrol car in a tense scene in South Los Angeles.

The protesters converged on City Hall, where they stood face-to-face with police officers for a couple of hours. Some threw traffic cones and other objects at officers but greater violence didn’t break out.

Later a splinter group used barricades from police headquarters to block part of US Highway 101.

In Oakland, a small group of protesters briefly shut down Interstate 980 on a second night of protests, but police officers were able to clear them from the traffic lanes.

Protesters also briefly shut down Interstate 580 in the city. With reports from AP and AFP

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