More than 300 people gathered at Nathan Phillips Square and marched to Yonge and Dundas on Saturday (December 14) to protest the death of Eric Garner.
Garner died after being placed in a chokehold by a New York Police officer who was subsequently not charged or indicted by a grand jury. The haunting final moments of Garner’s life were captured on video: while pinned facedown on the sidewalk by four officers, Garner repeated “I can’t breathe” 11 times. Protestors in Toronto chanted “I can’t breathe,” “The system isn’t broken it was built this way,” “Black lives matter” and “No justice no peace no racist police.”
At Yonge and Dundas, demonstrators took the intersection for a mass die-in. Saturday’s demonstration was part of a North American-wide day of action calling out state sanctioned violence against black people.
