Thousands of protesters took to the streets again on Tuesday to demand justice for a black teenager, who was shot twice by a white man in the US state of Missouri last week.
The victim, identified as 16-year-old Ralph Paul Yarl, was shot twice and struck in the head by a white man last Thursday evening, in Kansas City.
He was picking up his twin brothers from a friend’s house when he rang the wrong doorbell and was shot by the homeowner through a glass door.
Police said Yarl was transferred to the hospital with injuries described as life-threatening.
The case has now drawn nationwide attention and prompted outcry on Kansas City’s streets and online from celebrities and activists.
On Sunday, protesters gathered in front of the house where Yarl was shot, and demanded the homeowner face hate crime charges.
Two prominent civil rights attorneys, Lee Merritt and Ben Crump, who have agreed to take the case, criticised authorities for releasing the gunman.
According to Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves, the homeowner had been released after 24 hours in custody, and that a statement from the victim would be needed before pursuing any charges.
The suspected shooter has not been identified by the authorities.
Graves said police were working ‘as expeditiously and as thoroughly as we can.’
Police did not say how many times Yarl had been shot.
The teenager’s aunt Faith Spoonmoore said: ‘Ralph is alive. He is healing.’
The incident has also sparked outrage on social media.
Mayor Quinton Lucas said there’s a ‘thorough’ investigation underway now.
Deadly shootings are a regular occurrence in the United States, a country of around 330 million people that has an estimated 400 million guns.
Meanwhile, a man has been charged with second-degree murder in the US after he allegedly shot and killed a 20-year-old woman as the car she was in mistakenly drove up the man’s driveway.
Kaylin Gillis was with three other people in New York state on Saturday.
They accidentally drove into the driveway of Kevin Monahan in the town of Hebron, police say.
As the driver was leaving, 65-year-old Monahan, allegedly opened fire on the vehicle, hitting Gillis.
The area is rural, and the driveways are poorly lit at night. None of the group had exited the vehicle or attempted to enter Mr Monahan’s house before he allegedly opened fire, local sheriff Jeffrey Murphy said.
Murphy said: ‘There’s clearly no threat from anyone in the vehicle. There’s no reason for Monahan to feel threatened.’
The friends drove away from the house and attempted to call for help in a nearby town, but Gillis was pronounced dead by paramedics.
Monahan was ‘uncooperative with the investigation and refused to exit his residence to speak with police’, the sheriff’s office said in a news release.
A GoFundMe page was created to help Gillis’s family ‘with funeral and other expenses’.
Elsewhere, about 40 workers at the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shop in the Vermont city where the company was founded, announced on Monday that they plan to form a union.
The ‘scoopers’ at the Burlington shop said they have formed an organising committee and petitioned the National Labour Relations Board for an election.
They said they have the support of the upstate New York & Vermont chapter of Workers United, the union that started the Starbucks unionisation campaign in Buffalo, New York.
The shop employees’ letter to management says they want a voice in key decisions over issues such as salaries and health care costs.
- Staff at the Rhode Island School of Art and Design (RISD) who have been on strike since April 2nd were joined on the picket line on Tuesday by students.
Tony Suazo, a rep for Teamsters Local 251 and a member of the bargaining committee, said: ‘There’s about 600 students out here all throughout campus showing solidarity and support for these workers. It’s an unbelievable sight.’
The union, which has been in contract negotiations since June 2022, is prepared to strike ‘indefinitely’ until a fair contract is reached, organisers say. The average wage of a RISD groundskeeper is $16.74 per hour.
The lowest wage is $15.30. The union is fighting for a $20 minimum wage. The union began taking steps to authorise a strike following a breakdown in negotiations with the school’s administration over wage increases in February.
Several departments across the art school have issued statements in support of the union including architecture, digital and media and sculpture. An online petition calling on the administration to meet the union’s demands has received more than 2,900 signatures (the school’s total enrollment is around 2,600 students)
The Providence City Council issued a statement on Instagram on 11 April expressing its ‘support and solidarity’.
The council also pressed the school’s leaders to ‘come to the table in good faith and reach an agreement with the striking workers’.
The strike at RISD coincides with another that is ongoing at Rutgers University in New Jersey (home to the highly-ranked Mason Gross School of the Arts). Around 9,000 academic workers there have been on strike since 10 April.
A group hoping to unionise student workers at New School University in New York City has started organising potential members by highlighting the university’s union-busting tactics and critiquing the school’s financial practices.
In a rally, the undergraduate student leaders of The New Student Workers Union (NewSWU), mobilised workers to sign union cards and learn about their effort.
The new union says it will work alongside The New School (SENS) which is affiliated to the United Autoworkers Union (UAW).
Event organiser and student worker Jovanna Liuzzo said it will take the entire New School community to create change.
She said: ‘We are very firm in not wanting to prolong this us-versus-them mentality.
‘We want to be working from the inside and out at the same time because we are students and workers in this administration, so we’re not solely just critiquing it.
‘We’re saying everyone in this system needs to be a part of bettering it.’
Liuzzo and other event coordinators were inspired by the rallies held and organising work done during the Part-Time Faculty’s contract negotiations last winter.
Fellow event organiser and third-year student Aarya Kini said the way to begin creating a better future for The New School is simply to come together and talk to one another.
Kini added: ‘That’s what spaces like this rally are for, is to get everybody in one place in community and solidarity with each other, have them understand the context of what’s happening, and then allow them to respond to that in a place where they’ll be heard and acknowledged.’
Kini said that even those who are not employed by The New School are still affected by austerity. She said the rally gave those in attendance – workers or not – ‘a moment to all sit down and pause together and really understand what our positioning is within the university.
‘To be cognisant of the fact that we’re not just going to class here, we’re part of a system. A larger system that doesn’t work without the labour of all the people that were present at this rally.
‘You can’t strip every single resource from the workforce and expect the university to still be a place of community and value to students. People will leave,
‘The reality is that many of us love this place and we want this to be a space where everyone is treated fairly, where everyone has a say in what happens with our governance.’
Emily Li another student worker said: ‘Without our work, The New School wouldn’t work. Students, staff, and faculty need to learn to value their labour more and start organising to end austerity.’
