Ferguson demonstrators disrupt holiday shopping in Wichita and other cities (VIDEO)

Demonstrators temporarily shut down two large malls in suburban St. Louis on one of the busiest shopping days of the year Friday, as rallies were held nationwide – including in Wichita – to protest a grand jury’s recent decision not to indict the police officer who fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson.

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, Mo., about 10 miles south of Ferguson.

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 in Chicago, New York, Seattle, Northern California and elsewhere.

In Wichita, roughly 100 protesters waving signs and shouting “Hands up, don’t shoot!” and “All lives matter!” spread across the northern crosswalk of Rock Road at Kellogg Drive. They refused to move for rush-hour traffic, briefly shutting down one of city’s busiest intersections to show their ire over allegations of police brutality not only in Ferguson but also on a local level.

Drivers halted by the protest line honked – some in anger, others in support – while demonstrators chanted. Eventually, four squad cars pulled behind the protest line and officers ordered to protesters to vacate the street or risk arrest.

One man was bumped by a car that drove between two patrol cars, as officers looked on. As many as 20 police officers were at the scene at times during the demonstration.

Gabrielle Griffie, the 18-year-old Wichita State University freshman who organized the protest, said when the grand jury handed down its decision not to indict Ferguson officer Darren Wilson, “there was a lot of crying first and then it was just a lot of rage.”

Those feelings, she said, prompted her to take action.

“It’s not just an issue that affects us here,” she said. “Police brutality and systemic racism is something that affects everyone in the country.

“Mike Brown wasn’t just some stranger across the border of our state. Mike Brown lives here. Everyone of us is a potential Mike Brown.”

Griffie said people should not “spend a single penny on Black Friday so long as this is going on. It’s ridiculous that you would ignore an issue as huge as this just to go shopping.”

Demonstrations also continued in and around Ferguson, where Wilson shot Brown, who was unarmed, in August.

“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.

Monday night’s announcement that Wilson, who is white, wouldn’t be indicted for fatally shooting Brown, who was black, prompted violent protests that resulted in about a dozen buildings and some cars being burned. Dozens of people were arrested.

The rallies have been ongoing but have grown more peaceful this week, as protesters turn their attention to disrupting commerce.

In Chicago, about 200 people gathered near the city’s popular Magnificent Mile shopping district, where Kristiana Colon, 28, called Friday “a day of awareness and engagement.” She’s a member of the Let Us Breathe Collective, which has been taking supplies such as gas masks to protesters in Ferguson.

“We want them to think twice before spending that dollar today,” she said of shoppers. “As long as black lives are put second to materialism, there will be no peace.”

Malcolm London, a leader in the Black Youth Project 100, which has been organizing Chicago protests, said the group was also trying to rally support for other issues, such as more transparency from Chicago police.

“We are not indicting a man. We are indicting a system,” London told the crowd.

Other planned events around the country seemed relatively brief and thinly attended in contrast to the large demonstrations earlier this week. In Brooklyn, a “Hands Up, Don’t Shop” protest had been scheduled, but no one materialized.

At a shopping center in the St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood, a dozen people gathered and chanted “Black lives matter.” Security was heightened at the Wal-Mart in Ferguson on Friday morning, with military Humvees, police cars and security guards on patrol. The store was busy, but there were no protesters.

In California, more than two dozen protesters chained themselves to trains running from Oakland to San Francisco. About 25 protesters started Friday morning by holding train doors open to protest Brown’s death. No one was hurt.

In Wichita, the protest drew a racially diverse crowd outside of Towne East Square, where shoppers bustled to catch Black Friday deals.

Among them was Auriel Brown, who has traveled between her home in Wichita and her native St. Louis to participate in Ferguson protests since the weekend following Brown’s death.

“I have a 12-year-old son, so the way I look at it, my son could be Mike Brown,” she said as she stood on the northwest corner of Rock and Kellogg Drive, waiting for the protest to begin. “And I don’t want to wait for tragedy to knock on my doorstep to answer.

“The fact that other cities, including Wichita, are getting involved is making it that much more relevant and it’s making it that much harder for the higher ups to ignore.”

This story was originally published November 28, 2014 at 10:26 PM with the headline "Ferguson demonstrators disrupt holiday shopping in Wichita and other cities (VIDEO)."