VIDEO: Chicago Braces for New Protests Following Video Showing Police Killing of Black Teen

Chicago braced for more protests Wednesday after the release of video footage showing the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by police officer Jason Van Dyke.

The Guardian reports:

Protests are expected outside City Hall on Wednesday and demonstrations are being planned to block the city’s main shopping thoroughfare, Michigan Avenue, during the traditional post-Thanksgiving spending bonanza on Friday.

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said he hoped to see “massive” but peaceful protests.

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel warned that the city’s residents “will have to make important judgments about our city and ourselves – and go forward.”

Read more here.

On Tuesday, “Democracy Now!” reported:

Chicago is bracing for several new developments in the police-involved death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was shot and killed over a year ago. Officer Jason Van Dyke will reportedly be charged with first-degree murder on Tuesday, and the city has until Wednesday to release the video footage of the shooting, ordered last week by Cook County Judge Franklin Valderrama. An autopsy report shows McDonald was shot 16 times on October 20, 2014, including multiple times in the back. Police have said that the teenager lunged at the officer with a small knife. But people who have seen the video from police dashcam footage say it contradicts the police account, instead showing Van Dyke opening fire on the teenager while he was walking away, and continuing to shoot him even after the teenager was lying on the pavement. Despite the fact that McDonald’s family did not file a lawsuit, the city paid them $5 million in April and fought to conceal the video, even after the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune and a freelance journalist all filed FOIA requests for its release. Van Dyke remains on paid desk duty, as the shooting is investigated by the FBI and the United States attorney’s office in Chicago. For more we are joined by Jamie Kalven, founder of the Invisible Institute, a nonprofit journalism outlet that recently released tens of thousands of pages of civilian complaints filed against the Chicago Police Department — 97 percent of which resulted in absolutely no disciplinary action. Kalven is also the freelance journalist who uncovered Laquan McDonald’s autopsy report.

“Democracy Now!” also spoke with Charlene Carruthers, National Director of the Black Youth Project 100:

[Carruthers’] organization declined a meeting with Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office on Monday as the city tries to quell impending protests. “For us, it was important not to take a meeting with the mayor where it was clear to us that this series of meetings was about how are we going to quell our fears — being the mayor’s office’s fears — about what young, black people are going to do once this video is released,” Carruthers said. “They’re very concerned with the city remaining peaceful, but unfortunately, the community, or the target, that is being told to remain peaceful is not the Chicago Police Department.”

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.