Protests Temporarily Close Malls, Shut Down Trains to Disrupt "Black Friday" From [HERE] and [HERE] and [MORE] Demonstrators shut down two large shopping malls near Ferguson, Missouri, at the start of the holiday shopping season on Friday as protests over the killing of an unarmed black teen by a white police officer turned on some retailers around the country.

After a quiet Thanksgiving Day, protesters were out in force again to vent their anger at Monday's decision by a grand jury not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the Aug. 9 shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in the St. Louis suburb.

Activists around the country said they were encouraging a boycott of Black Friday sales to highlight the purchasing power of black Americans, and to draw links between economic and racial inequality.

Several stores lowered their security doors or locked entrances as at least 200 protesters sprawled onto the floor while chanting, "Stop shopping and join the movement" at the Galleria mall in Richmond Heights a few miles south of Ferguson, where officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Brown, who was unarmed, in August.

The protest prompted authorities to close the mall for about an hour Friday afternoon, while a similar protest of about 50 people had the same effect at West County Mall in nearby Des Peres. It didn't appear that any arrests were made.

The protests were among the largest in the country on Black Friday, along with rallies elsewhere in the country including Chicago, New York, Seattle and northern California, where protesters chained themselves to trains.

"We want to really let the world know that it is no longer business as usual," Chenjerai Kumanyika, an assistant professor at Clemson University in South Carolina, said at a rally at a Wal-Mart in Manchester, another St. Louis suburb.

Voicing your opinion is not enough," said Sergio Uzurin, a protester in front of Macy's flagship store in New York. "You have to disrupt business as usual for this to happen and that's the only thing that's ever made change. It's the real way democracies function." [MORE]