As shoppers were busy making purchases on one of the most crucial shopping days of the year, hundreds of people took to the streets in cities across the country on Friday to protest various issues, including police mistreatment of minorities and retail workers to the fur trade industry.

In Illinois, activists have called for a shopping boycott in Chicago’s downtown on Black Friday as around 400 people gathered in the city’s Magnificent Mile shopping district to demand an elected civilian police review board.

They have pressed for an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council since a video was released last year showing a white police officer fatally shooting black teen Laquan McDonald.

City officials have said they plan to create a non-elected citizen oversight board next year.

An engaged crowd listened to speakers on Friday morning near the city’s historic Old Water Tower.

One speaker criticized Republican President-elect Donald Trump in the same breath as Democratic Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Others expressed shock over two fatal shootings by Chicago police that occurred Wednesday night and Friday morning.

A Chicago police officer shot and killed a gunman who had killed one person and injured another early Friday, in the second fatal shooting involving the city’s police in just over 24 hours.

The incident followed an unrelated shooting late Wednesday in which a sergeant responding to a call of a battery in progress on the city’s South Side shot and killed a 19-year-old man during a foot chase.

A search failed to uncover a weapon the sergeant told investigators the man was carrying and relatives of the dead teenager are disputing police statements that he was armed.

A probe of Chicago police practices by the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is expected to wrap up in the first months of next year.

Organizers of the protest in Chicago included the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and Black Lives Matter, according to The Chicago Tribune.

Organizers said they aimed to bring attention to issues including police mistreatment of minorities and economic inequalities that have continued to keep Chicago’s west and south sides suffering from poverty and gun violence.

‘For some, it’s about the police, some it’s about immigration,’ activist Barbara Lyons, 79, of Jewish Voice for Peace told the Tribune.

‘It’s just all the people who are not (Trump supporters), and they’re afraid,’ Lyons said.

In New York, protesters were stopped outside major retailers located on Seventh Avenue including Lord & Taylor, Urban Outfitters and J.C. Penney in a bid to bring attention to the mistreatment of retail workers.

The protesters also expressed solidarity with those against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, according to RT.

Members of Caring Activists Against Fur were outside a Macy’s during in New York on Friday as they held signs and protested the fur trade industry.

In Seattle, Black Lives Matters protesters were reportedly planning on gathering in downtown Seattle on Friday during the annual tree lighting ceremony for the third year in a row.

They were set to gather at Westlake Center at 1pm to disrupt holiday shopping and the protest is planned to last until 8pm, according to KIRO7.

Amid the protests, at least four people have been shot in the US, two of them killed, as people clashed across the country over bargain items on a record-breaking Black Friday.

Shoppers appear to have largely stayed away from the madness in retail stores this year, instead opting to venture online for the best post-Thanksgiving pre-Christmas deals.

But the opening of stores late on Thursday evening invited chaos and trouble early on, with several shootings in mall parking lots. Footage inside stores such as Walmart and Target also captured tense shopping scenes.

In New Jersey, the shooting outside a Macy’s department store that left one man dead occurred around 1am on Friday at the Hamilton Mall in Mays Landing as people lined up outside the mall for door-buster deals.

Demond Cottman, 21, of Atlantic City was shot multiple times and pronounced dead at the scene.
His 26-year-old brother Shadi Cottman from Clayton, was shot in the leg and listed in stable condition at AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center.

Officials did not immediately say what sparked the shooting or if they had any suspects.

Demond, who was married, was also a new father, a college student and a standout athlete, his family told the Press of Atlantic City.

He had previously graduated from basic training from the U.S. Air National Guard in 2014, his family said.

One shopper who was at the scene and has been coming out for Black Friday shopping for the last ten years said the shooting was sad, adding that Black Friday is ‘getting scary now,’ according to CBS Philly.

More than 15 evidence markers were laid down in the parking lot and an SUV with bullet holes was towed away around 7am on Friday.

The Macy’s store had opened at 5pm on Thursday before the mall closed at midnight and reopened to shoppers at 6am.

Meanwhile in Nevada on Thursday, a person was shot dead in a road rage incident in a Walmart parking lot in Reno, police said.

The shooting occurred around 6pm at the Walmart on East Second Street after there was apparently a dispute over a parking spot, according to KOLO.

Police and the FBI are investigating the Thanksgiving shooting as authorities search for a dark-colored Toyota Camry or Corolla that was driven by a driver described as a light-skinned black male.

In Tennessee, a man suffered a gunshot wound after shots were fired at Wolfchase Galleria Mall in Memphis on Thursday around 11.15pm as shoppers were looking to score Black Friday deals at the mall.

The incident occurred in the parking lot outside the food court area after witnesses said a suspect fired several shots and then fled in a Ford Mustang, according to WREG.

Initial reports indicated no one was injured but a man showed up at Baptist Memorial Hospital with a gunshot wound.

Three suspects are now in custody and officers have since collected shell casings from the scene.

Between 2006 and 2014, there have reportedly been seven deaths and 98 injuries during Black Friday shopping.

The shootings in New Jersey and Nevada occurred as shoppers eager to bag a bargain began their spending sprees as some stores across the U.S. kicked off their sales on Thursday afternoon.

Cellphone footage from various stores showed shoppers fighting over items in a bid to score shopping deals.

In video apparently recorded inside a Walmart in Bainbridge, Georgia, showed shoppers fighting over towels that were on sale for $1.60 during the Black Friday rush on Thursday.

At one point, one woman so eager to get her hands on a towels that she fell into the box.

Meanwhile, shoppers at a Walmart in Houston broke into an all-out melee on Black Friday, as customers battled it out for some $99 kiddie convertibles.

On Friday, most stores opened their doors around 6am for what is still one of the busiest days of the year, even as the start of the holiday season edges ever earlier.

Some stores, including Sears, Bass Bro Shops, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Bealls opened as early as 5am while stores such as Hobby Lobby and some Nordstrom locations had a later start at 8am.

Many stores are offering the same deals as in previous years, like $19.99 boots that remain a big attraction, cashmere sweaters, and sheets. For some shoppers, big discounts on electronics are the draw.

Stores like Macy’s, Walmart, Target and more were open on Thursday evening in what they hope will be a new holiday tradition and closed for the night before reopening on Friday.

Several shoppers were out looking for bargains on TVs. Other items that drew crowds were cellphones and Hatchimals — eggs with a small, animated animal inside that hatch when given attention.

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, vies with the Saturday before Christmas as the biggest sales day.

On Friday, online sales are forecast to top $3billion for the first time ever, hitting $3.05billion in online revenue, up 11.3 per cent from the last year, according Adobe Digital Insights.

Preliminary data from Adobe shows Black Friday online sales on US retailers’ websites have raked in an estimated $490 million between midnight and 8.30am ET, according to USA Today.

Black Friday is also forecast to be the first day in retail history to top $1billion in mobile revenue as a result of mores shoppers using their smartphones and tablets.

As shoppers snagged deals online, Macy’s wrestled with some technical issues on its website leaving some customers frustrated.

Though early afternoon, many visitors to the site saw ‘Temporary shopping jam.’

Macy’s had a 10-second countdown to get to the site, though the delay often ran longet than that.

‘We are still taking a high volume of online orders, and we are working quickly to alleviate the delay issue which we hope to have resolved shortly,’ the company said.

Shopper Dana Sari finished all of her holiday shopping online on Friday morning, but she and her mother kept to their decades-old tradition of spending Black Friday together.

They arrived at the relatively quiet MacArthur Center mall in downtown Norfolk, Virginia, shortly after 8am where each bought a coffee and sat near a Nordstrom.

Sari, 43, a neuropsychologist who lives in Norfolk, says it’s not so much about the consumerism as it is the quality time with her mother during the holiday season.

She prefers buying gifts from online catalogues and boutique retailers rather than larger corporations, which she says value her less as a customer, she said.

Also on Friday, Wall Street extended its gains in thin trading, with the three main indexes hitting record intraday highs, helped by gains in consumer staples and technology stocks.

The stock markets closed early for Black Friday, while trading volumes were thin.

The three major indexes closed higher for the third week in a row, extending their rally since the U.S. election – the S&P 500 marked its seventh record close since November 8.

However, the defensive consumer staples and utilities sectors have been the worst performers in that period.

The consumer staples sector gave the S&P 500 the biggest boost on Friday, closing up 0.79 per cent, led by gains in Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola.

On Black Friday morning, crowds were thin at U.S. malls and stores.

In the New York and Chicago areas, shoppers said stores were less busy than previous years on the day after the Thanksgiving holiday.

‘Nobody was busting down the doors at 6am,’ said Tracy Watkins, a Bed, Bath and Beyond store manager at the Chicago Ridge Mall, as temperatures outside lurked below freezing.

‘I’ve been here on other Black Fridays and it was bad, but I guess this year because of the hours it’s not bad. Really calm,’ said shopper Lauren Green, who was in line outside a Zara clothing store in the Roosevelt Field Mall on Long Island east of New York at 5.20am.

Shopper Julie Singewald’s Black Friday started at 4am at a Twin Cities outlet mall.

By 6am, she and her two teenage daughters made it to the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.

Singewald said she was merely the vehicle — ‘and sometimes the credit card’ — as her daughters hunted for deals and worked on their shopping lists. Increasingly, the 44-year-old is doing more of her shopping online.

‘I’m a point-and-click person,’ she said. ‘If it were up to me, I would be in my pajamas and on my computer at home.’

After what appeared to be a strong turnout for Thanksgiving sales, some early morning reports indicate that traffic to malls may be slower on Black Friday than last year as retailers spread the deals out throughout the week.

‘It was a really good start. But I have never seen Black Friday morning so calm,’ said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD Group, a market research firm, who visited malls on Long Island on Friday.

He still believes the weekend’s sales will likely be up over last year because shoppers did lots of buying, including pricey flat-screen TVs.

But long before people got through the doors in stores on Thursday, more than one-billion had already been spent online.

By Thanksgiving evening, online spending by U.S shoppers had climbed to $1.13 billion, according to Adobe Digital Index, surging almost 14 per cent from a year ago.

Target Corp said on Thursday it had seen one of its ‘strongest days ever’ online, while Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the largest bricks-and-morter retailer in the United States, said Thanksgiving Day was ‘one of the of the top online shopping days of the year.’

The deepest average discounts for Black Friday came from leading online retailer Amazon.com Inc, with an average of 42 per cent off, compared with 33 per cent off on Walmart, 35 per cent on Target and 36 per cent on Best Buy, according to e-commerce analytics firm Clavis Insight.

President-elect Donald Trump also stepped into the online sales excitement.

On Friday morning, Trump’s online store announced it was offering a 30 per cent-off deal on all campaign products, including a $149 Christmas ornament.

‘President-elect Trump loves a great deal,’ a promotional email said.

For years, Black Friday has started the holiday shopping season in the United States with retailers offering steep discounts.

But its popularity has been on the wane with the emergence of online shopping and cheap deals through the year from retailers.

‘There will be continuing dominance in online sales today as consumers increasingly realize they will get the same deals in-store and online,’ said Brent Schoenbaum, a partner at Deloitte & Touche LLP. Schoenbaum, who was out visiting stores in Glendale, California, said customer traffic in-store remained subdued.

Schoenbaum, who was out visiting stores in Glendale, California, said customer traffic in-store remained subdued.

‘It used to be very busy, but for the past two years the mornings are not very crazy,’ said Gina Reynolds, a 39-year-old housewife who was shopping at a Macy’s store in the Water Tower Place Mall in Chicago.

Crowds were also relatively thin at other retailers in the mall, including department store J.C. Penney and apparel seller Abercrombie & Fitch.

During the Thanksgiving weekend, 151 million Americans reportedly do their holiday shopping in store or online, spending an average of $299.60 each.

In Rhode Island, shoppers who arrived after sunrise at the Garden City outdoor shopping mall in Cranston said they were glad their state — along with Massachusetts and Maine — doesn’t let retailers open on Thanksgiving Day.

‘I don’t like the idea of it,’ said Lauren Glynn. ‘I feel bad for the people who have to work.’

She and her husband, who are restaurateurs, came to the Cranston mall for fun, to soak up the experience and maybe find a few deals, but they said they plan to do most of their gift shopping online and at locally owned shops where they live in Bristol, Rhode Island.

Sam Glynn said it’s at local shops where they will look for ‘cool knives and glassware, things that have meaning.’

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which started its Black Friday sales on Thursday at 6pm, said shoppers were embracing technology products.

Steve Bratspies, chief merchandising officer at Walmart’s U.S. division, said in addition to Black Friday favorites like televisions and toys, they were looking for drones, virtual reality products and hoverboards.

Walmart started its online sale just after midnight on Thanksgiving, three hours earlier than last year. It reported on Friday that 70 per cent of the traffic to its website came from mobile devices.

Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren told The Associated Press that store traffic has been encouraging on Black Friday, adding that shopper numbers have been strong at its flagship store on Friday morning.

Lundgren said clothing sales have been good, with sportswear, dresses and even social occasion fashions doing well.

However, he’s hoping for some cold weather to help fuel more sales of winter items.

Lundgren believes that the rising stock market will help shoppers’ mood.

Jeff Gennette, president of Macy’s who will become CEO early next year, believes there was pent-up demand after the contentious presidential election was over. He says consumers can now focus on other things.

Leah Olson was at Mall of America Friday morning, following some Thanksgiving night trips to Target and a local mall.

Olsen said she had done some online shopping, but preferred making in-person stops.

‘I always like to walk, go to the mall,’ said the Chanhassen, Minnesota resident. ‘I just like shopping.’

Meanwhile in Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker declared Friday as Green Friday as his administration is encouraging people across the state to buy their Christmas trees, holiday plants and wreaths at local farms.

Massachusetts’ nursery industry helps drive the economy and residents can make a difference by shopping for garland and other seasonal decorations at farms, farmers’ markets, roadside stands and nurseries instead of big box stores, Baker said.

The holidays create hundreds of seasonal jobs at the state’s nearly 400 Christmas tree farms, the state Department of Agriculture said, adding the sector generates $1.4 million each year.

People had camped out in tents outside some Best Buy stores on the Thursday, including one in Utah where the temperatures plummeted to below-zero, while others raced through the doors at J.C. Penney.

The department store kicked off its sales at 3pm on Thursday – hours before some people sat down around the table for Thanksgiving dinner.

The National Retailers Foundation says online spending over the three-day bonanza will reach an eye-watering $8.4billion.

The NRF’s annual holiday shopping forecast expects $3.05billion on Black Friday and $3.36billion on Cyber Monday – which would mean it is the biggest shopping day of all time.

Other forecasters project overall holiday spending will rise by 3.6 per cent – which would be a bigger jump that the average seen over the past seven years.

If spending does increase by the predicted amount, 690,000 new seasonal jobs will be created, according to the NRF.

It comes after it was revealed retailers have braced for a massive holiday rush this year.

This weekend is crucial to set the tone for the holiday season.

Around 137 million people plan to or are considering doing their shopping during the Thanksgiving weekend, according to a survey conducted for the National Retail Federation.

That includes online and store shopping. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, vies with the Saturday before Christmas as the busiest shopping day of the year.

The NRF, the nation’s largest retail group, expects holiday sales to rise 3.6 per cent to about $656 billion for November and December mainly due to rise in online shopping, better than the 3 per cent growth seen for those months last year.

That excludes car sales, gas and restaurant receipts but includes online spending and other non-store sales such as catalog spending.

Consumer confidence rose by 8.4 points from October to 85.2 in November – the biggest gain within a month since December 2011, according to the University of Michigan’s final reading of consumer sentiment for November.

‘The upsurge in favorable economic prospects is not surprising given Trump’s populist policy views, and it was perhaps exaggerated by what most considered a surprising victory as well as by a widespread sense of relief that the election had finally ended,’ Richard Curtin, University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers chief economist told Bloomberg.

With increased confidence in job security, wage growth and soaring markets, shoppers are planning to spend, spend, spend over the holidays.

They also estimate that holiday sales will grow 3.6 percent on last year – bringing a $630.05 billion boon to the economy.

‘You will see a bump in spending this year because this election was so close, so highly contested, and so dramatic no matter which candidate you supported,’ Marshal Cohen, retail analyst with NPD Group, told Business Insider.

The predictions are in line with results of a recent survey by ForeSee revealed most Americans are planning to spend the same or more during the holiday season than in the run up to the election.

While it could be expected that Trump supporters would be driving the spending frenzy on a wave of optimism after their candidate won, the survey reveals that 20 per cent of Democrats plan to spend more in the coming weeks.

That is double the percentage of Republicans who plan to up their spending.

Cohen added: ‘Half the country is going to be happy, so they are going to go out and spend, and half is going to be very distraught and disturbed – and one way to get out of that slump is to distract themselves by going to stores.’

With so much air time dedicated to the election over the past year, retailers will also get the chance to air their holiday advertising.

Meanwhile, shoppers who had been holding back over concerns about what the results could mean to the economy have been pleasantly surprised.

Big department stores, such as Macy’s and Kohl’s are expecting a strong holiday spending period.

‘Things that are distracting like the election, once there’s an outcome, certainty is a good thing,’ Kohl CEO, Kevin Mansell said. ‘So from a positive perspective, having certainty on that is probably a good thing looking into the holiday.’

That is double the percentage of Republicans who plan to up their spending.

Cohen added: ‘Half the country is going to be happy, so they are going to go out and spend, and half is going to be very distraught and disturbed – and one way to get out of that slump is to distract themselves by going to stores.’

With so much air time dedicated to the election over the past year, retailers will also get the chance to air their holiday advertising.

Meanwhile, shoppers who had been holding back over concerns about what the results could mean to the economy have been pleasantly surprised.

Big department stores, such as Macy’s and Kohl’s are expecting a strong holiday spending period.

‘Things that are distracting like the election, once there’s an outcome, certainty is a good thing,’ Kohl CEO, Kevin Mansell said. ‘So from a positive perspective, having certainty on that is probably a good thing looking into the holiday.’

Source: Daily Mail UK