ST. LOUIS, MO, August 25 (RIA Novosti) - Young African-American men face potentially life-threatening discrimination because they are “pre-judged” by police and other members of the community, a St. Louis, Missouri, protester told RIA Novosti.
“A lot of black males are pre-judged just by their look and their size, they are just pre-judged in this day and age. I’m worried about young people in my family and what happens when they deal with a world like that,” bus driver Jolonda Barnes, 39, said.
Barnes joined hundreds of protesters in central St. Louis on Sunday to rally against police brutality at an event, where the members of the families of two teenagers killed in high-profile race-related shootings were expected to make an address.
The mother of Mike Brown, 18, who was fatally shot by police in nearby Ferguson, Missouri, this month, was due to appear alongside the parents of Trayvon Martin, a Florida teenager shot dead in 2012.
“Ferguson’s a peaceful community. This thing happening brought a whole lot of people out. People got so angry because the cop was not arrested, and looking at the evidence that a lot of us saw, we saw he should have been at least suspended. It touched a lot of hearts,” Barnes said.
Ferguson, a mostly African-American suburb of St. Louis with some 21,000 residents, has been shaken by often violent protests since Wilson shot and killed Brown, an unarmed teen walking with a friend on a leafy backstreet on the afternoon of August 9.
The grand jury of three African-American and nine Caucasian members began the hearing of evidence on the shooting Wednesday and is expected to decide on the possible charges against Wilson by mid-October. The inquiry hinges on whether Wilson fired in self-defense.
Missouri Governor Jay Nixon withdrew National Guard troops on Thursday as protests calmed in recent nights. Police have been criticized for using military tactics, toting assault rifles and using tear gas, rubber bullets and other heavy-handed measures.
