A look at the moving scenes that defined the ‘Hands Up Walk Out’ protest
On Monday, thousands of protestors across the country walked out of their schools, and walked out of their jobs all in order to protest a St. Louis grand jury’s decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting and killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.
The protest was called Hands Up Walk Out, and took place at 12:01 p.m. — the exact time Brown was killed in Ferguson. A large portion of the protestors were young people, with organizers encouraging high school and college students to walk out of their classes in order to keep the outrage momentum from last week’s ruling going.
The photos from around the world are breathtaking. Under the #HandsUpWalkOut banner, organized by civil disobedience group Ferguson Action, we see thousands of people marching with signs or simply with their hands above their heads, a gesture of surrender that Brown is supposed to have made before he was shot to death. Many of the signs read the words that have become the simple, powerful, and incredibly important rallying cry of the movement: “Black lives matter.”
Other activists opted to lie down on the ground en masse in a “die-in” to protest the decision.
In Congress, Representative Hakeem Jeffries brought the protest to the House floor, joining other lawmakers to make the gesture.
Even members of the NFL team the St. Louis Rams participated, raising their arms before taking the field on Sunday.
These images tell the story of an issue not even close to over.
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