Protesters took to Armstrong Park Thursday to object to the Kentucky Attorney General refusal to press charges against the officers in the Breonna Taylor case.
The group Mobilizing Millennials amassed around two-dozen people in the park.
“This is not going away anytime soon,” said J. Christopher Johnson, founder of Mobilizing Millennials told WWL-TV. “As long as I am a black man who is a part of the marginalization and the disenfranchisement of what is going on in America, my fight will not cease. Even though at our original march there were 300 people and today we had smaller numbers, I don’t care if I was out here by myself with a microphone.”
Johnson’s aim was to get voters to support candidates who are pushing for sweeping changes in policing, especially the end of no-knock warrants.
Former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, now head of the National Urban League, commented no-knock warrants should only be for extreme circumstances.
“The risk of life, the risk of a problem is high when you startle people at their door by just breaking the door down, this is the theory of a no-knock warrant, without announcing that you are the police,” Morial told WWL-TV. He also called Taylor’s case a miscarriage of justice.
“While one officer was charged with a crime, no officers were charged with the death of Breonna Taylor,” Morial says. “That’s suggests in the mind of this prosecutor and this grand jury that somehow the shooting was justified which I vigorously disagree with.”
Loyola University Professor of Law, Majeeda Snead also responded, “The main thing is to look at the purpose, historically, of what a no-knock warrant is and balance that against the lives that have been lost. I mean, Breonna Taylor’s name, I mean, we know her name. But there have been so many others that have died as a result of these no-knock warrants.”
In calling Breonna Taylor’s death a travesty she said this is a historic moment in the fight for racial justice.
“I honestly think this is a new phenomenon. And I think the advent of social media and just people being able to be communicated across cities and states and countries has allowed for us to be able to examine the practices not just in our city or state, but nationally.”
