‘WE need a communist revolution,’ shouted crowds of angry protesters outside Ferguson, St Louis, police station on Friday night.
Hundreds of people gathered in the Missouri city on Saturday as protests continued for a sixth day against the grand jury decision not to charge white police officer, Darren Wilson, who shot dead unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.
Wilson’s resignation was announced on Saturday by one of his attorneys, Neil Bruntrager, who said his client’s decision was effective immediately.
‘I have been told that my continued employment may put the residents and police officers of the City of Ferguson at risk, which is a circumstance that I cannot allow,’ Wilson said in his resignation letter released late on Saturday.
Police said that 16 people had been arrested following a series of demonstrations on Friday, when a large group waved red flags and chanted ‘the only solution is a communist revolution!’
Others chanted: ‘Who do we want? Darren Wilson! How do we want him? Dead!’
As the National Guard replaced cops on the front line, there were chants of ‘turn the guns around and shoot the bosses down’.
Meanwhile, a number of people staged a ‘die in’ inside a shopping centre, lying on the floor for four-and-a-half minutes to disrupt Black Friday shoppers searching for discounted goods, as a reminder that Michael Brown’s body lay unattended for four-and-a-half hours.
Police said protesters attempted to block Ferguson’s South Florissant Road at least two times.
Police reported hundreds of arrests in cities from Los Angeles to New York last week.
In New York, over 200 protesters sought to disrupt Black Friday shopping on with a demonstration in front of the Macy’s store in Herald Square and marched into the ground floor, as staff and shoppers looked on.
In Cleveland, where a black 12-year-old boy, Tamir Rice, with a toy replica gun was shot dead by a white police officer, protesters against the killing were joined by workers demanding union rights at Walmart.
Joint pro-Ferguson, anti- Walmart protests took place all over the USA on Friday.
Around 200 people gathered near Chicago’s popular Magnificent Mile shopping district, where Let Us Breathe Collective member Kristiana Colon called Friday ‘a day of awareness and engagement’.
‘Let Us Breathe’ has been taking supplies such as gas masks to protesters in Ferguson.
Colon said the group wanted shoppers ‘to think twice before spending that dollar today. As long as black lives are put second to materialism, there will be no peace.’
In Seattle, dozens of people blocked streets, with some protesters chaining doors shut at the Pacific Place shopping centre.
A march in San Francisco ended in a riot with angry protesters smashing windows and hurling bottles and other objects at police, leaving two officers injured.
