Hundreds Attend 'Black Lives Matter' Protest Downtown
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Hundreds of people gathered in Point State Park on Saturday afternoon for a "Black Lives Matter" protest.
"No justice, no peace! No racist police! Black lives, they matter here!" the crowd chanted.
People began gathering in Point State Park around 1 p.m., not long after the end of the bicentennial parade.
"If we come together like we're supposed to right now, we will win. I don't think that we CAN win, I know that we WILL win," one man said through a megaphone to the crowd. "Because when we fight--!"
"We win!" the crowd responded.
Sarafina Davis of Pittsburgh says she started the event on Facebook, and organizations and individuals reached out to support the protest.
"My message is 'we are people too.' We want to be treated like everybody else is treated," Davis said. "We want these police officers to stop killing our people, and when you do kill our people, I want you to be held accountable for it. We're tired. We are tired."
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The crowd grew as the afternoon went on. The protest ended around 4 p.m. after the crowd marched through downtown Pittsburgh. At one point, marchers headed toward the Parkway East, but when police said they couldn't protect the group there, marchers returned to Point State Park to end the rally.
They chanted and expressed their concerns and frustrations with the events across the country this week, including the shooting of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La., and Philando Castile, outside of Minneapolis, Minn. The group was primarily young people, not just African-Americans, who wanted to share the message that gun violence needs to stop and that Black Lives Matter.
"I just wanna say enough is enough," said Kamari McHenary from Detroit, Mich. "I'm tired of turning on the news, and the police are killing our young black men. This is just crazy. I'm just tired of it. Enough is enough. So I came all the way down here from Detroit to let them know that enough is enough, and it's time to take action."
According to a Pittsburgh Public Safety public information officer, there were no arrests or citations. There was not, however, a permit for this march.
Officers who were on patrol at the city's bicentennial events earlier Friday morning were held over to cover the march.
