On one of the busiest commercial days of the year, in one of the largest malls in the world, protesters interrupted business as usual to send a message: “While you’re on your shopping spree, black people cannot breathe.”
An estimated 3,000 people on Saturday flooded the rotunda and partially shut down the Mall of America, located in Bloomington, Minnesota, demanding an “end to police brutality and racial inequities affecting Black and brown Minnesotans,” according to a statement from the Minneapolis chapter of Black Lives Matter.
“Today’s protest was our biggest success yet,” said Mica Grimm, an organizer with Black Lives Matter Minneapolis. “Thousands of people stood together, refused to be intimidated, and disrupted business as usual on the busiest shopping day of the year at the biggest mall in the country. As long as innocent Black and brown lives are disrupted by police without consequence, we cannot go about business as usual.”
The crowd chanted “Black Lives Matter” and sang the song by the Bronx-based group Peace Poets that has resounded at street protests, die-ins, and direct actions across the country: “I still hear my brother crying I can’t Breathe. Now I’m in the struggle saying I can’t leave…”
Scenes from the protest are captured by filmmaker Jon Reynolds:
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