Video of protesters singing “Ruff Ryder’s Anthem as they marched into Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
There have been almost daily protests in Pittsburgh this past week in the wake of the outrageous non-indictment of the police officer who choked unarmed Black man Eric Garner to death in Staten Island. This has only added fuel to the flame of the growing local movement against police brutality that recently took over the interstate and expanded into the suburban areas.
“Are you sick of seeing this yet?!”
On December 3, the day of the New York City grand jury verdict announcement, a rally was immediately called for that evening. Less than three hours later, a crowd gathered at Schenley Plaza in Oakland and quickly swelled to over 200 people. After a four and half minute moment of silence – a minute for each hour Mike Brown’s body was left in the Ferguson summer heat – the crowd took their anger into the streets. They gathered around the intersection as some laid in the street in a symbolic die-in. Celeste Scott, a Black mother, pointed at the bodies in the street and screamed, “Are you sick of seeing this yet?”
The protesters then marched through traffic on the busy three-lane Forbes Avenue strip and back via the equally busy Fifth Avenue with their hands in the air chanting “Hands up, don’t shoot,” stopping to hold several four and a half minute long die-ins. Onlookers were overall supportive – one person high-fived protesters as they walked past and several people joined the march. The march concluded as demonstrators returned to the Forbes and Bigelow intersection shouting “Shut it down!” and the intersection was once again encircled.
Addressing the crowd, organizer Julia Johnson shouted, “Everyone, we just shut it down! And what are we going to do next? We’re gonna fight back, we’re gonna organize! We are in this for the long haul – together!” The crowd broke out into chanting, “We are one!” then disbanded chanting “We’ll be back!” The action had shut down traffic for over an hour.
The next day 150 people gathered downtown in front of the August Wilson Center, a Black cultural center, to continue expressing grief and rage at the injustice system. The protesters shut down the heart of Pittsburgh for an hour as they marched through the streets with their hands up and held several die-ins at busy intersections. The protest came to an end at the steps of the City-County Building where protesters held another die-in and people screamed in rage over recurring injustices done by police.
“Shut ’em down, open up shop”
On December 5, over 500 people gathered during constant rain for a rally organized by high school group Pittsburgh Students against Police Brutality at Schenley Plaza. The students felt very connected to Mike Brown; like many of them, he was 18 years old and heading to college. Students of the Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts School had been engaging in almost daily protests, from sit-ins in the hallways to singing in the cafeteria, since the previous week’s actions. After several speeches expressing students’ disgust with the justice system, the huge crowd broke out into a march around several blocks of Oakland.
After the brief march, a large group of over 200 broke off into another march down Fifth Ave. The march then made its way onto Interstate 376 without police escort and brought heavy traffic to a standstill, marking the first time in Pittsburgh’s history that protesters shut down an interstate highway. Marching and chanting down the interstate – stopping briefly by the Allegheny County Jail to denounce mass incarceration and chant to the prisoners “We see you” – the protesters made their way into downtown and onto the Smithfield Street Bridge with police desperately trying to keep ahead of them. They crossed the bridge into Pittsburgh’s South Side neighborhood and marched through the weekend bar crowd chanting “Black lives matter” and “Hell no – we won’t go!” They then marched over 20 more blocks and across the Birmingham Bridge. After marching for a total of more than seven miles for three hours in constant rain, the protesters broke out into the “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem” as they returned to Oakland. Traffic had been stopped or severely disrupted in several parts of the city for the entirety of the march.
Movement breaks out into suburbs
The next morning a group of activists engaged in a silent march at Ross Park Mall in the nearly entirely white suburb of Ross Township. The initial group of thirty marched through the crowded mall, navigating peak business hours of Christmas shoppers and a heavy police presence. During the march, the group more than doubled in size as mall goers ditched their shopping outings to join the procession. The line, flanked by police, walked both levels of the mall silently, arms in the air.
At one of the main entrances of the mall the group participated in a die in for four and a half minutes. Community leaders read aloud to a gathering crowd of onlookers and security forces the statistics of ongoing police brutality against the Black community, including Leon Ford Jr. – a local man shot five times and left paralyzed after a traffic stop. The group of activists rose to their feet to chant “No justice, no peace” and “We’ll be back” enthusiastically. Before dispersing, the group gathered to continue organizing with one another.
Upcoming actions include a die-in protest at Carnegie Mellon University at 1:00 PM on December 10 and a rally for Leon Ford Jr. at the corner of Penn Avenue and Highland Avenue in East Liberty at 6:00 PM on December 12.
