The fight against police brutality instigated by the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson has reached Houston, and local citizens have banded together to protest through the UH campus.
Thousands of students from UH marched throughout Houston on Tuesday. | Julie Nguyen/The Cougar
Starting at 5 p.m. at MacGregor Park, 2,000 protestors marched through Wheeler St. before continuing down Cullen Boulevard, Holman Street, Scott Street and finally Cleburne Street in protest of the grand jury’s decision to not indict Officer Darren Wilson.
“Everyone’s really angry that police authorities are slaughtering our youth with no consequence,” UH alumna Michelle Garcia said.
The protest is being led by founder and pastor of Green House International Church, E.A. Deckard.
They continued on until they were blockaded at 288, Dowling Street and Southmore Boulevard by police cars and riot police on horses.
Chants of “hands up, don’t shoot,” “no justice, no peace” and “shut it down for Michael Brown” are ringing through the streets and cars stopped at intersections have honked in solidarity.
“We came to support the family of Michael Brown and the people that have had their civil rights violated by police brutality,” said Pedro Blandon, a Civil Rights Project employee.
At this time, they are en route back to MacGregor Park. There are approximately 500 protestors still marching and have been marching for over three hours now.
“We can go all night,” said UHD international business student Fyra Arabghani.
The crowd started at 100 people in the park and was never more than 300 by the time they got to 288. A small minority of those were students, and the protesting never came on to the campus. Why don’t you try again with that ridiculous headline. How about this one; self-righteous idiots wander home through Third Ward clutching their purses as misguided plan to shut down to 288 fails miserably.
If you have problem with third ward, why are you here?
I do love how just mentioning Third Ward means I have a problem with it; maybe you should reread my comment. My problem is with the hypocrisy of opportunistic and uniformed activism, and in conducting a march against the police that, when over, requires a police presence at every intersection so the participants can walk back to their cars safely. Hate ’em ’til you need ’em I guess. This type of protest gives the participants the feeling of having done something without actually having done anything. It’s the equivalent of sticking a pink ribbon on the back of your car to increase awareness against breast cancer. We all know that breast cancer exists, and we all know that police, like every area of government, need checks and balances to keep things pointed in the right direction. Marches and pink ribbons do not further the efforts.
1. Marches raise awareness, though I feel they must be paired with writing letters with aim to change legislation in things (i.e. making cops wear body cameras)
2. The protest moved through half of campus and there were many students there( there certainly weren’t 2000 people though). There were even people on campus Tuesday passing out fliers for it.
3. I also found the police escort thing ironic. But keep in mind that none of the protesters are anti police. They all just want police to have accountability for their actions and not receive special privileges (though IMO the mike brown case wasn’t the proper case to headline this movement. The family simply made the most noise about their sons case.)
2000? who is writing this? seriously people working for the cougar needs to read the news before accepting and publishing crap like this
I see the writers, and I use the term liberally, have fallen prey to the same emotional, yet illogical and irrational arguments as the so-called protesters. Facts don’t matter, such as the facts indicating the suspect did not have his hands up in surrender posture, facts such as justice was served not revenge.
Randy –
Kenny Rogers just called – he wants his beard back.
Sweet beard! Ignore the follicley-challenged dave.
Seriously, why is anyone protesting in Houston, when this is the town where people can just shoot someone through their front door who is simply knocking on the door and get no-billed by a grand jury? Where are the protests because its legal to shoot someone who you believe is breaking into your neighbor’s house? Why aren’t people protesting the Texas Stand Your Ground law where its legal to shoot someone that’s getting into your face because you feel threatened? Why are we joining in a demands for a legal lynching of someone who has been cleared by a grand jury when we won’t even take care of our own backyard?
In Ferguson, people demonstrated by burning and looting shops
owned by innocent individuals. That proved
what point? If you think doing the same
thing here in Houston is going to make a difference, you are again very
wrong. People in Texas have handguns and
will defend their property. Frustrated
or not, violence on either side is not the answer. How many more have to die in protest to make a fruitless point.
Agreed.
I am proud of the youth of this generation that have the courage to stand up for what they believe in and protest without violence. Dr. Martin Luther King and Ghandi believed in nonviolence and it has brought us this far. For every minority in this country, which is America. If you are not a caucasion white male then you are a minority. “Hands up, don’t shoot,” “no justice, no peace.”
Did any of these protesters actually read the Grand Jury testimony? The forensics backed up Wilson’s version. Contrary testimony was confused and unsubstantiated. Witnesses other than the officer said Brown never raised his hands and said “Don’t shoot.” Officer Wilson told the grand jury that Brown charged the police cruiser where Wilson was in the driver’s seat. Brown punched him in the face and reached for Wilson’s gun. Wilson said he tried to get out of his cruiser but Brown slammed the door shut twice and hit him with his fist. “I felt that another of those punches in my face could knock me out or worse … I’ve already taken two to the face and I didn’t think I would, the third one could be fatal if he hit me right,” Wilson said. Wilson fired 12 times during the whole incident. Wilson said two shots were fired during a struggle at his police vehicle and that he then fired three bursts of gunfire as he chased and then backed away from Brown. He testified that his Sig Sauer .40 caliber gun held a maximum of 13 bullets. Twelve casings were recovered and one bullet remained in the weapon, according to the grand jury documents. Brown came back at him. Wilson said Brown kept running through shots. Wilson testified he shot at Brown on the street when Brown turned on him. “As he is coming towards me, I tell, keep telling him to get on the ground, he doesn’t. I shoot a series of shots. I don’t know how many I shot, I just know I shot it,” he said. “I know I missed a couple, I don’t know how many, but I know I hit him at least once because I saw his body kind of jerk,” he said. Wilson testified that Brown did not slow down.”At this point I start backpedaling and again, I tell him get on the ground, get on the ground, he doesn’t. I shoot another round of shots,” he said. “Again, I don’t recall how many him every time. I know at least once because he flinched again. At this point it looked like he was almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I’m shooting at him. “And the face that he had was looking straight through me, like I wasn’t even here, I wasn’t even anything in his way.” He told the jurors he thought Brown was going to tackle him. “Just coming straight at me like he was going to run right through me. And when he gets about that 8 to 10 feet away, I look down, I remember looking at my sites and firing, all I see is his head and that’s what I shot.
Yeah, I somehow doubt those cars were honking in solidarity. They were probably trying to get the protestors to get out of the way so that they could get home to their families after a long day of work.
Not seeing how there are 1000’s of UH students as implied ??
This is so frustrating. Don’t people read the facts regarding this case and see that Michael Brown was a thug? He robbed and convenience store and resists arrest. The justice served here is another thug off the street that is causing harm to the community.
I can’t believe people are looking at this as a race topic. If anything this should only be seen as a cops abusing their power vs. common people. But even then there was no proven evidence of the cop misusing his power or using any sort of racial diction against michael brown.
I black community needs to wake up and stop blowing these ridiculous events out of proportion. It only makes the protesters look like fools who have no evidence to back up anything they say. It’s ironic because “THEY”RE” in fact being racist for saying this is a race thing with no evidence to back it up. They say this has to do with race because Michael is black and the Cop was white.
Why don’t these people talk about all the wonderful things these “White” cops have done to provide justice in their community? Why do we only hear about the bad and nothing about the good? It baffles me to see this type hate in this day and age.
Don’t use the term “the black community”. We don’t all think the same or believe the same things. Nobody ever says “the white community” because white people don’t all think the same either. Nobody thinks exactly the same as anyone else.
Also, if you knew how many minorities were killed by police every year vs. non minorities, you would understand why people make things like this a race issue. I was reading stats on this and it’s very evident that cops tend to kill minoriy youth over 20 times more often than white youth. I will say that the Mike Brown case in particular wasn’t the best case to advocate for as he was indeed resisting arrest. But ONE person resisting arrest doesn’t mean that all people shot by the cops were resisting.
And with the way cops were treating the protesters in Ferguson it is no wonder the protests went from peaceful protesting initially (treated with teargas, rubber bullets and harassment from police) to some people now violently protesting.
I’ve watched videos on all of this. I watched as the officers choked eric garner to death, i watched officers shoot down John Crawford III, here’s the video of both. Don’t tell me they were resisting. Garner didn’t make aggressive movements, he was just a large man with a loud voice, his hands were up to show he’s not armed, he moved so they wouldn’t grab his hands but never reached for anything or made an aggressive move at anyone. They choked him to death despite him saying he couldn’t breathe at least 7 times.He may have died from a heat attack. but it was certainly a heart attack induced by the stress of several police officers smothering him and being chokeholded. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1ka4oKu1jo
John was simply walking around a store with an item that he wanted to purchase, while it’s not the smartest idea, not once did he raise the gun at anybody, and it was a freaking bb gun. The stupid family called the cops on him because they assumed his gun was real or he was gonna rob the place (because people like to assume the worst, especially of minorities). in the video he doesn’t even look at the family, he doesn’t even turn towards them, he;s just standing there looking at dog food, not pointing the rifle at anybody. and the cops litterally ran in shooting, they shot and killed him. He didn’t even have the chance to drop the weapon, they didn’t even ask him to. They litterally ran in and shot him, and now he is dead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9FtNOV6Qhk
This is why people make these things a race issue. It is known that the people in this country assume that black men especially are violent people. That is why these men are dead. That is why many other men are dead.
And being a criminal or a thug does not mean a person deserves to die. You don’t know how many countless people there are in this world that are wrongfully painted as thugs, or that are indeed criminals, but clean up their lives and become normal law abiding citizens one day. It disgusts me that you think robbing a corner store is justification for being killed.
I’m not saying that all cops that kill minorities (or non minorities) are bad people, or that they did it on purpose. I am however sure that many of these cases are due to racism, or they are due to societies socially ingrained perception that minorities are automatically going to be more aggressive than non minorities. I bet you they train officers to think this way unknowingly.
“Thousands”
The Daily Cougar, y’all
OMG, why would you want to lend your good name and reptuation to Michael Brown, a punk who robbed a store, punched a cop and tried to take the cop’s gun away? Isn’t that backing totally the wrong horse? Why not go protest something really useful for someone who really deserves it?
It’s sad to see police being trained to behave aggressively towards citizens. Nobody want’s to see people getting shot for nonsense reasons. According to NY Times, the grand jury consisted of 9 whites and 3 blacks. I wonder if the decision would be different if the grand jury was 6 whites (3 men and women) and 6 blacks (3 men and women). Well this is just a hypothetical. It is not real. We must remember this quote.
“Looking for justice will kill you. There’s no such thing. Whatever happens is real. What you think should have happened is not real. You’re disappointed, not in the world, but in your value system. It’s your value system that’s screwed up not the world. The world is normally screwed up by time.”- Jacque Fresco
When the an 11 year old Latina got raped by 18 oppressed Blacks, UH students did not care, because unlike her, Michael Brown is someone they would like as a customer of their convenience store