On December 20, 2014, the last Saturday before Christmas, thousands of people converged on the East Rotunda at the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN, one of the world’s largest shopping malls, to stand in protest of the slow-rolling massacre of black men, women and children at the hands of militarized, unaccountable, and institutionally racist police forces across the United States. I was among them; I liveblogged the event and posted pictures and video later. Despite the peacefulness of the protest, we were met with force, as police in full riot gear literally slammed our bodies against their shields to force us out of the mall.
In the wake of the event, 29 people were charged with various crimes, including 11 people identified as “organizers.”
Today, I am pleased to report that the charges against the organizers have all been dismissed on Constitutional grounds:
In a 137-page decision, Chief Judge Peter Cahill dismissed all charges against the 11 organizers, while keeping in place trespass charges against a number of individual participants in the protest.
“We stand proud today. We stand vindicated today,” said Nekima Levy-Pounds, a University of St. Thomas law professor and one of the 11 organizers. “And we continue to stand in solidarity with people across the country who are declaring that Black Lives Matter and who are disrupting the status quo in their attempts to get justice.
While some individual trespassing charges remain, this is a slap in the face to the Bloomington city attorney’s office, and to that I say, good! The city attorney’s office trumped up these charges to punish people for daring to disrupt an orgy of spending that is Christmas shopping at the nation’s largest shrine to consumerism.
A few thoughts:
I had the opportunity to briefly meet the aforementioned Nekima Levy-Pounds at the event and was immediately impressed by her warmth, her determination, and her passion for the movement. Reading about her in the months since has reinforced that first impression. I am very satisfied to see at long last the charges against her dropped, particularly as unconstitutional.
As to the event itself, it did disrupt shopping — but it didn’t have to. I want to emphasize that prior to the arrival of police to blockade the area, shoppers could easily walk through the rotunda and continue on their way. The protest was peaceful, nonviolent, and unobstructive. Only the arrival of the police and their subsequent actions created a total disruption of traffic — and that’s important to understand in context of these charges.
The fact that mall management has the power to disallow protests still galls me on the grounds that though the Mall is supposedly private property, more than a hundred million dollars of public money went toward building it, and tens of millions more on its expansions — and if our money is going into it, and its doors are open to the public, why do our rights to free speech and assembly not apply there?
Finally, this is hopefully an emboldening event where further protests can be organized without fear of organizers being arrested and oppressed for exercising their First Amendment right in support of the radical notion that black people are, well, people.