At Ferguson March, Call for Labor Day Highway Protest

Activists on Saturday called for mass civil disobedience on the highways in and around this St. Louis suburb to protest the killing of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer, with the leaders of one coalition encouraging supporters to stop their cars to tie up traffic on Labor Day.

The announcement came at a peaceful if at times tense march and rally on Saturday that drew more than 1,000 demonstrators to some of the same Ferguson streets where the police clashed with protesters in the days after the killing of Michael Brown. Mr. Brown, 18, was shot Aug. 9 by Officer Darren Wilson of the Ferguson Police Department, and his bloody body lay on Canfield Drive for about four and a half hours before it was removed.

Organizers at the rally on Saturday called on demonstrators to drive on Interstate 70 and other area highways at 4:30 p.m. Monday, turn their hazard lights on and stop their vehicles for four and a half minutes to symbolize those four and a half hours that Mr. Brown’s body lay in the middle of the street.

“We’re going to tie it down, going to lock it down,” Anthony Shahid, one of the lead organizers of the rally, told supporters from the stage at a Ferguson park. “I want the highways shut down. I know it’s a holiday, but it won’t be no good holiday.”

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