Protesters chanting "no justice, no tree" tried to muscle into the annual lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center Wednesday night — but never got near the giant Christmas tree.
The protesters were penned in along Sixth Avenue in front of Radio City Music Hall after they tried to ram through a police barricade and were pushed back by a phalanx of police, the
New York Post reports.
"It’s the biggest thing going on in the city tonight, so seemed like a good place to make a statement," Nick Connolly, 30, of Brooklyn, one of hundreds who marched up both 5th and 6th avenues to converge on the televised tree lighting, the Post reports.
The demonstration came in the wake of
Wednesday's decision by a grand jury not to indict a white police officer in the chokehold death of an unarmed black suspect Eric Garner, who was being arrested for selling loose cigarettes.
The grisly July 17 confrontation was captured on a cellphone videotape.
"I think it’s disgusting that the NYPD can get away with murder," Alexander Rubinstein, 22, of Manhattan's Lower East Side, told the Post. "There’s a double standard with the police and how they can just throw black people in jail."
Another mob of protesters was penned a few blocks away, where police threatened to arrest anyone who breached the barriers to make a charge at the 8 p.m. tree-lighting ceremony, the Post reports.
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