By Wesley Lowery and Arelis R. Hernández, Washington Post – October 13, 2014.
ST. LOUIS – In a third day of civil disobedience, local and national clergy members with up-stretched arms cross police lines and were arrested during a protest at the Ferguson Police Department.
The planned act, which organizers called Moral Monday, featured a more-than-four-hour protest in which waves of clergy demanded to speak with Ferguson Police chief Tom Jackson and crossed police lines.
Among those arrested in one of the first waves was Dr. Cornel West, an activist and scholar who declared his intentions on Sunday. “I’m not here to give a speech,” he said. “I’m here to get arrested.”
Clergy members conducted at least three waves of arrests, with many kneeling in prayer as they were taken into custody. Police officials could not immediately confirm how many arrests had been made.
Heavy rain poured from the sky as the protest went on for more than four hours. The demonstration is the first of several planned demonstrations and mass-arrest events on Monday, all part of a campaign centered on Ferguson, Mo., the small suburb where Michael Brown, a black 18-year-old, was killed in August by a white officer…read more.
