In the week since two Black men were killed by police officers in Minnesota and in Louisiana, protests have been breaking out throughout to country demanding change to the justice system. Many of the protests carry signs and chant, “Black Lives Matter,” a movement that began in 2012, after Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teen was killed by a civilian vigilante.
Milwaukee is no different. Monday evening, protestors gathered at Red Arrow Park for a rally. The park is where a Milwaukee police officer shot and killed Dontre Hamilton in 2014.
More from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Roughly 200 people took to the streets of Milwaukee Monday afternoon and evening to protest the recent killings of two black men by police.
The march, which began next to the Starbucks in Red Arrow Park where Dontre Hamilton was shot by a Milwaukee police officer in 2014, came two days after protesters marched into Mayfair mall in Wauwatosa to protest the shooting of Jay Anderson by a police officer on June 23. It also came after a week in which five Dallas police officers and two black men — Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La., and Philando Castile in a suburb outside St. Paul, Minn. — were killed.
“Unity and camaraderie and respect is what we want to preach,” said Nate Hamilton, one of the leaders of the protest and the brother of Dontre Hamilton.
As family members of people who had been shot by police congregated in the middle of the crowd before the march began, Hamilton led a chant: “I am my brother’s keeper. I am not my brother’s reaper.”
Linda Anderson, the mother of Jay Anderson, who was in his car at Madison Park when he was shot, addressed the crowd.
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