Protesters taking aim at Black Friday after a grand jury's failure to indict the police officer who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, continued to rally into the night in cities across the country.
In the St. Louis area, dozens of people upset about the grand jury decision began trying to interrupt shopping at major retailers Thanksgiving night and and continued early Friday. According to Johnetta Elzie, who was tweeting and posting videos, the protests occurred at a number of Wal-Mart stores and a Target.
A mall was closed briefly as dozens of protesters moved store to store staging "die-ins," where they lie down on the floor like corpses, according to NBC affiliate KSDK. Thursday night also brought "stand up, don't shop" rallies at big box stores across St. Louis County.
On Thursday, six demonstrators were arrested at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York.
The arrests came after some protesters allegedly tried to organize a disruption of the parade on social media using the hashtag #stoptheparade.
"We will not tolerate, under any circumstances, any effort to disrupt this parade," Police Commissioner William Bratton said Thursday. "This is a national event, a historic event. Anybody who would seek to interrupt it would be callous, indeed, on this very special day."
More than 150 people rallied outside Macy's in Herald Square, eventually making their way to Times Square. At least two people were arrested for blocking the sidewalk. A protester told NBC New York that the point of the demonstrations was to diminish Black Friday profits to make the government notice.
Los Angeles police on Friday night began detaining people who were running into traffic despite orders to stay on the sidewalk. A group of 50 to 100 protesters marched in the Westlake District where police blocked the intersection near the 101 Freeway as crowds chanted "Let us go."
In West Oakland, about 20 protesters chained themselves to each other and a train and shut down the Bay Area Rapid Transit or BART. One participant told said the group planned to stay on the tracks for four hours to symbolize the amount of time Brown's body was in the street after he was killed.
About 100 people in Chicago said they said they would remain outside the stores on Friday but would urge people not to shop.
Meanwhile at the Wal-Mart store in Washington, D.C., Ferguson protesters joined a few hundred living wage activists at a rally. The gathering was peaceful and included a four-a-half-minute moment of silence to remember Brown. The Black Friday living wage protest was organized by unions as one of several against the company.
Although there were a handful of signs reading, "Black Lives Matter," the majority of protesters focused their message on wages and hours. Activists say that D.C. Walmart employees do not earn enough to support their families in an increasingly expensive city and want to see wages increased to $15 an hour.
A similar protest took place outside a Wal-Mart in North Bergen, New Jersey. The union-backed group Our Walmart says demonstrations were planned at 1,600 Wal-Mart stores around the country.
An entirely different sort of protest took place on in Beverly Hills as animal rights activists targetted Rodeo Drive over fur sales.
Inside stores, as Black Friday kicked off earlier than ever this year, steps were taken to keep crowds under control, but not everyone was behaving.
Kimberly States, who was shopping with her 11-year-old daughter at the Westfield Fox Valley mall in Aurora, Illinois, told The Associated Press it was markedly more quiet around 6:30 a.m. Friday than it was the night before, when she made her first trip to the mall to pick up some holiday deals.
"It was a zoo last night around 10 p.m.," States said. "Now it seems like more of the old folks."
Some fights did break out -- at a Kohl's in Tustin, California, near Los Angeles, for example, where two women attacked two other women in the baby department. One of those attacked was taken to the hospital for precautionary reasons; her condition was not known.
Tustin police said two arrests had been made.
An argument with shoving was also reported at a Walmart in Norwalk, California. Police officers responded but no arrests were made, and it was unclear what the dispute was about.
And in New York, a 4-year-old boy and his 11-year-old handicapped sister were left alone in a hotel while their parents were at an outlet mall on Black Friday, police said. The father has been charged with endangering the welfare of a child.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
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