US Congress Employees Protest Police Killings

US Congressional staffers took to the steps of the US Capitol raising their hands in the "hands up, don't shoot" gesture in a display of solidarity with people protesting against police brutality and unfair sentencing.

MOSCOW, December 4 (Sputnik) – Dozens of staffers working at the US Congress made the "hands up, don't shoot" gesture in solidarity with people protesting against police brutality following two grand jury decisions not to charge white police officers, who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York, Reuters reports.

Approximately 150 employees, mostly African-Americans, staged a walkout on Thursday afternoon, according to al-Jazeera. They held a prayer service on the steps of the US Capitol and raised their hands in what has become a rallying cry following Brown’s killing in many cities across the US.

"Today as people throughout the nation protest for justice in our land, forgive us when we have failed to lift our voices for those who couldn’t speak or breathe for themselves," Senate Chaplain Barry C. Black prayed.

"May we not forget that in our national history injustice has often been maintained because good people failed to promptly act," he said. "Lord, comfort those who mourn, who know the pain of loss, the anguish of grief and the futility of despair," he added.

"We're coming out here to let them know, no, it's not business as usual, our lives matter, we're asserting our humanity and our dignity," a congressional employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Huffington Post. "Even though we go to work in these prestigious buildings among prestigious people, we go home and we're still profiled, we still are part of those statistics," the staffer added, saying that "[i]t could have been any one of us who was Eric Garner, who was Mike Brown."

The event is the latest in a series of protests against police brutality and unfair sentencing, especially regarding African-Americans. It was organized by the Congressional Black Associates, Congressional Hispanic Staff Association and Congressional Asian Pacific American Staff Association, according to the International Business Times.

Last week, four members of the Congressional Black Caucus took to the House floor raising their hands up in the “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture. "It’s a rallying cry of people all across America who are fed up with police violence," Democratic Congressman Hakeem Jeffries said, as quoted by Politico. "Now this is a problem that Congress can’t run away from and the [Congressional Black Caucus] stands here today to make sure that Congress runs toward the problem. That we come up with constructive solutions to breaking this cycle, this epidemic, this scourge of police violence all across America," he added.

In late November, New Yorkers took to the streets to protest the grand jury decision not to indict Daniel Pantaleo, a white police officer, who asphyxiated African-American Eric Garner in July 2014. They chanted "I can't breathe" referring to Garner’s last words before he died from suffocation after being put in a chokehold. Protests spread to other US cities.

The grand jury decision on Garner followed another similar case in Ferguson, Missouri, where African-American teenager Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer in August. That killing and a similar verdict by a grand jury not to charge police officer Darren Wilson set off nationwide protests and renewed debates over police brutality and unfair sentencing.