MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A judge ruled Tuesday that several local Black Lives Matter organizers cannot demonstrate at the Mall of America on the busy shopping day before Christmas Eve, but she said she couldn’t stop others from attending the protest.
Lawyers for the nation’s largest mall had requested a temporary restraining order to prevent the Black Lives Matter protest planned for Wednesday, in hopes of avoiding a repeat of the massive demonstration that disrupted business and closed stores in the mall last December.
Hennepin County District Court Judge Karen Janisch barred three protest organizers named as defendants in the mall’s lawsuit from attending the demonstration, but she limited her order to them. The mall had sought to block the entire Black Lies Matter group from protesting.
“The Court does not have a sufficient basis to issue an injunction as to Black Lives Matters or to unidentified persons who may be acting as its agents or in active concert with the Black Lives Matters movement,” she wrote.
The judge also denied the mall’s request to order the organizers to remove posts about the protest from social media and to alert followers that the demonstration had been canceled. The organizers’ attorney argued during a Monday hearing that those demands were clearly unconstitutional.
Mall attorney Susan Gaertner had said a restraining order would make it clear that the mall prohibits demonstrations on its own private property. She did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment about the ruling.
Protest organizers want to draw attention to the Nov. 15 police shooting of a black Minneapolis man, Jamar Clark, who died a day later. They also want to ramp up the pressure on investigators to release video of the shooting. Authorities say they won’t release it while state and federal investigations are ongoing.
“We’re not going to be canceling the protest,” organizer Miski Noor said after Monday’s hearing on the mall’s request for a restraining order. “Us not showing up and us not speaking would be the mall winning.”
The privately owned mall says another demonstration would mean lost sales, mirroring a major protest last year.
Thousands of demonstrators descended on Mall of America last December, angry over the absence of charges following the police killings of unarmed black men in New York City and Ferguson, Missouri. Stores in the mall had to close and dozens of people were arrested.
Gaertner repeatedly stressed at Monday’s hearing that the mall’s opposition to the Black Lives Matter protest is not about their message, but the venue and the protest’s potential for disrupting last-minute holiday shopping.
Police say Clark, 24, died during a struggle with officers. Others, though, say Clark was handcuffed at the time.
Protest organizers want a special prosecutor to be appointed in Clark’s death rather than have a grand jury decide whether to charge the officers involved in his death. In addition, they want federal terrorism charges to be brought against four men who shot at protesters outside a Minneapolis police precinct last month, injuring five.
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Free speech is fine and dandy, but in what way is the Mall of America complicit in the recent incidents of police brutality? Mall cops?
As a former small business owner and relying on that business for my livelihood, I can fully understand the desire to not disrupt holiday business – for the large majority of small businesses, especially niche stores like chocolates, cards, etc., the year-end holidays represent upwards of half the yearly sales. That said, I am a supporter of the Black Lives Matter message – and that message needs to get out there. How to go about doing so in a manner that doesn’t alienate businesses and the customer (the person you hope to engage) takes great finesse.
There is no better time of the year than the Holidays like Christmas, Ramadan, Hanukah, Yule, Solstice, etc., to engage folks on this very urgent issue. This event should not be a ‘protest,’ but more like outreach.
First of all no one’s that would listen to BLM is arguing the lives of Black People don’t matter. Yes they do. And I think most folks agree a Black person’s life doesn’t have the same value to many law enforcement types that a white life does. And that has led to the unnecessary loss of Black Lives at the hands of law enforcement. I get that. Most do.
But BLM doesn’t seem to get it. If they did they would construct protests that made those points and not conduct “piss everyone off” protests. Heckling politicians, blaming those that are not to blame and shutting down malls at Christmas wouldn’t move me to their side if I was not on it. For me, they’ve been up to their crap long enough not to care about them anymore. Their cause a good one but I also think they’re full of shit and a bunch of alienating assholes. They do way more harm than good.
A tricky bit is that though the mall is private, it was built with a lot of public help. I don’t know what sort of public use agreements were involved, so protesters might actually have a right to some sort of protest. But they can’t protest where another event is already scheduled, public or private. Basically, the law isn’t clear. Tactically, I agree with a prior commenter that this makes no sense. The occupation of the police precinct made sense because that was the object of the protest. If they protest some sort of discrimination at the mall, that’s different.