Aliyya Swaby Photo
Med student Robert Rock leads a chant.
Some 50 Yale med students joined their peers nationwide in a “white coat die-in” protest against police brutality Wednesday afternoon.
This marks the fourth local demonstration in less than a week sparked by recent grand jury decisions not to indict white police officers who killed unarmed men in Ferguson and New York. Dozens of medical students formed a semi-circle and then “died” in the small courtyard in front of 333 Cedar St.
Some, like medical fellow Michael O’Brien, had also participated in an earlier campus die-in organized by Yale Law School students that drew more than 500 people last Friday afternoon.
Students Wednesday afternoon lay on the ground for 4.5 minutes, representing the 4.5 hours teenager Michael Brown lay dead on the ground after Officer Darren Wilson shot him. A siren from someone’s megaphone brought them back to life.
They took turn leading call-and-response chants now canon for the movement across the country and even internationally.
Second-year medical student Zola Quao was overwhelmed with emotion as she called out: “No justice!”
“No peace!” came the response from the line.
The medical students then led a march through Sterling Hall, leaving bystanders outside on the sidewalk. Before they headed off, Quao urged the crowd to “continue the conversation,” to encourage others to join the fight against police brutality.
meanwhile thier peers actually dying in the streets of new haven, when is someone going to organize protests with this much publicity to help bring and end to black on black violence?