See Congressional Staffers Stage a Powerful Walkout Over Grand Jury Decisions

Dozens of congressional staffers walked out of their offices in Washington, D.C., on Thursday afternoon to gather on the steps of the Capitol in a show of protest against two recent grand jury decisions in the police-invovled deaths of unarmed black men.

The staffers posed in the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” position that has been used in demonstrations across the country in response to the death of Michael Brown, the Ferguson, Mo., teenager shot and killed in August by a white police officer, who was not indicted by a grand jury.

Senate Chaplain Dr. Barry Black also led the demonstrators in a prayer. “Forgive us when we have failed to lit our voices for those who could not speak or breathe themselves,” he said, invoking the last words “I can’t breathe” by Eric Garner before his chokehold-related death on Staten Island in July. A grand jury in New York recently declined to indict the police officer in the incident.