Atlanta appeared quiet late Wednesday on the second night of protests following a Missouri grand jury’s decision not to indict a white police officer in the shooting death of an unarmed black teen.
Police braced for a confrontation that didn’t happen. Fewer than 100 people gathered in downtown Atlanta to publicly mourn the death of Michael Brown, shot and killed in an August confrontation with Darren Wilson, a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. A grand jury in St. Louis County, Mo., declined to indict the officer, touching off demonstrations that spread from Ferguson to the rest of the country.
In Atlanta, Wednesday’s protests bore scant resemblance to Tuesday’s, when hundreds people gathered on city streets and at Underground Atlanta. They held signs, marched and chanted. Some briefly blocked the Downtown Connector until officers stepped in. Police and state troopers arrested two-dozen people, most on disorderly conduct charges.
By Wednesday night, the ranks of demonstrators had dwindled from the night before. The police presence had not.
Still, some people took to the streets. “We’re going to do a little marching tonight,” said Elle Lucier, a student organizer of Atlanta’s Ferguson protests. “We’re going to continue to encourage righteous rage.”
Yet that rage appeared muted, even when some protesters tried to disrupt a basketball game.
Seven men and three women marched briskly through upper and lower levels of Phillips Arena on Wednesday night while the Hawks played the Toronto Raptors. “Hands up!” they shouted, mimicking a police order. “Don’t shoot!”
The game went on.
Social media carried the latest Wednesday night as protesters sought to regroup. On Twitter, their rallying cries included “Shut it down” and “It’s bigger than you.”
The Atlanta Police Department has canceled officers’ vacations and days off over the Thanksgiving holiday in order to be fully-staffed for possible incidents, particularly at the Downtown Connector, where some demonstrators were arrested Tuesday night.
City leaders described those demonstrators as a “small splinter group.” Officials said some of them were involved with the Occupy Atlanta movement. Occupy Atlanta supporters camped out several weeks in Woodruff Park in 2011 to highlight their concerns about income inequality.
“We just have a group of individuals out there that simply mean this city … harm,” Atlanta Police Chief George Turner told reporters Wednesday morning. Officers are working 12-hour shifts, Turner said.
Occupy Atlanta’s Facebook page said they were not involved in the demonstrations, but sympathized with protests against police brutality.
Protesters arrested Tuesday night were released Wednesday morning. The police, some said, were overly aggressive.
Ronald Comeaux, a sophomore biology and philosophy major at Morehouse College, said he was arrested after asking a police officer why he pushed someone and then asking the officer for his badge number.
“At that point, he got frustrated with me, looked at me and gave me this angry look,” he told the AJC. “He looked at his fellow officers that were surrounding me and told them to take me down.”
Nick Lulofs, 19, a sophomore at Georgia Tech, said he was following one group of demonstrators downtown when a commotion began and police tackled a protester. Lulofs said he was complying with a police officer’s order to leave, but was arrested anyway and charged with disorderly conduct.
“I was within my legal rights,” said Lulofs, who added the police presence was excessive.
Two reporters were among those arrested Tuesday. Charges against the journalists — a freelance reporter for the weekly newspaper Creative Loafing and a photojournalist from 11 Alive — were dropped Wednesday afternoon. The news organizations said the journalists were doing their jobs.
Atlanta officials said 13 of the 24 people arrested did not live in the city. Three people refused to say where they live, police said.
Atlanta, like many major U.S. cities, has grappled with protests in the wake of Monday’s racially-charged grand jury decision not to indict police officer Wilson, 28. Wilson said he shot at Brown in self-defense. Eyewitness accounts varied over whether Brown had his hands up before he was shot.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed credited most protesters for demonstrating peacefully. The mayor said he supports peaceful protests that are “fitting with our city’s tradition” of civil rights demonstrations, but that he would not condone people venturing on to Atlanta’s highways, particularly the Downtown Connector, or otherwise causing harm. Protesters attempted to block traffic on the busy highway.
“We are not going to tolerate our Downtown Connector being interfered with,” the mayor said.
In many other cities, demonstrators disrupted traffic on busy thoroughfares and highways.
“There appeared to be some level of coordination to stopping our freeways around the country,” Turner told reporters.
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal told the AJC Wednesday he “commends those who peacefully exercised their right to free speech, and he thanks the law enforcement officers who performed their duties with professionalism and maintained order.”
Some angry with the grand jury’s decision were looking for other ways to speak out that did not involve street demonstrations. Some local civil rights activists and others were encouraging African-Americans to shop only at black-owned businesses on Friday. Fulton County Commission Chairman John Eaves had scheduled a conversation between youth and law enforcement on Monday.
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