Following last month’s killing of unarmed black man Jamar Clark, hundreds of protesters gathered on Wednesday to march on Bloomington, Minnesota’s Mall of America, which resulted in at least 13 arrests for trespassing, disorderly conduct, failure to obey lawful order, unlawful assembly and obstruction of the legal process with force.
Shouting phrases and demanding justice, the protestors gathered in the main rotunda of the mall, prompting an announcement stating that the mall was closing and that shoppers should “seek shelter”.
Organizers of the protest say that the demonstration inside the nation’s largest mall was a diversion to distract from a pending protest at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
Once protesters departed from the Mall of America, a number of them went to a nearby light-rail train station, boarding trains headed to the airport, where demonstrators would block access to Terminal 2, shutting security lines for about 45 minutes.
Organizers say that the actions were a part of a six-city, nationally coordinated plan that included the Washington D.C, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Chattanooga areas. Incited by the shooting death of Jamar Clark, the Black Lives Matter movement has a list of demands that includes the release of the video evidence.
Governor Mark Dayton stated that the moving protest led to disruptions, and created a “very, very dangerous situation.”
Questioning the need for this sort of demonstration, Dayton also said that the call for the release of the video footage will have to wait, to reduce the risk of jeopardizing the integrity of the pending investigation.
