Protests that have erupted since a grand jury decided not to indict a police officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner are now nationwide, but New York City is at the center of it all.
Protesters filed down avenues between lines of cars backed up for blocks. They stopped traffic on the broad thoroughfare West Side Highway in Manhattan near 10th Street, CNN affiliate WABC reported. They stranded drivers on Broadway. And they even blocked the entrance to the Holland Tunnel leading to New Jersey.
Author and CNN commentator Michaela Angela Davis was marching in a mixed crowd of mostly white students chanting "black lives matter."
The blocked streets didn't bother her so much. It's democracy, she said.
"I feel like we are seeing the American project at work. It is messy; it is difficult."
NASA's Orion spacecraft lifted off this morning on an uncrewed test flight from Cape Canaveral, Florida to orbit Earth twice.
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Demonstrations spread across the country. The Navy investigates secret shower cams. And police arrest a suspect in the killing of an American teacher.
It's Friday, and here are the 5 things to know for your New Day
1. CHOKEHOLD DEATH
Growing protests: Marchers with signs in Dallas, Boston, Chicago and Manhattan, screamed for justice. And not only for one African-American man, Eric Garner, who died after a white police officer wrested him to the ground with a chokehold. The grand jury decision not to prosecute Officer Daniel Pantaleo may have unleashed the dam burst of protests, but the anger of a multitude marching through in the dark has encompassed more than Garner's death in Staten Island. It has energized those who believe police treat black lives like they don't matter.