Nabeehah Azeez
Nabeehah Azeez
“Black Lives Matter”
Police in St. Louis County say they’re expecting a peaceful weekend from protesters marking the anniversary of the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson but that they’ll be prepared should events turn violent.
Protest leaders are promising that events scheduled on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, August 2015, in the St. Louis area will be relatively calm. Brown was unarmed when he was killed last Aug. 9 by a Ferguson police officer in a shooting that galvanized the “Black Lives Matter” movement.
“The events we have planned this weekend are intended to show the strength of community, the value of self-empowerment and the power of the people,” Nabeehah Azeez, of Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment, said at a Monday news conference, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Azeez was joined by more than two dozen people from at least nine organizations at St. Louis offices for the Service Employees International Union.
The organizers called upon police to respect demonstrators’ free speech rights and to refrain from confronting them in a militarized manner.[1]