Protesters chanted such slogans as "No justice, no peace!"; "This is resistance! and "How do you spell racism? NYPD!" in reference to the New York City Police Department, which many blame for Garner's heavy-handed treatment.
The demonstrators blocked traffic on the West Side Highway, in the Lincoln Tunnel and on the Brooklyn Bridge on Wednesday night in the latest wave of US street activism over alleged racism and the excessive use of force by law enforcers.
Garner, 43, was a street peddler, selling untaxed cigarettes. A nearly 350-pound asthmatic, he died from suffocation after being put in a chokehold by police officer Daniel Pantaleo in July. A video of the arrest and chokehold was recorded by a bystander with a cell-phone and went viral on the internet.
The United States saw another wave of race-related unrest just last week over the grand jury decision not to indict another white police officer, Darren Wilson, who had shot an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, in August in Ferguson, Missouri.
