#BlackLivesMatter leaders in the Twin Cities are vowing to go ahead with a planned and highly publicized demonstration at the Mall of America Wednesday despite plans by the mall’s owners to obtain a temporary restraining order forbidding it, and requiring “organizers to remove posts with plans of the demonstration from social media and to send out notifications that the event has been canceled.” The official filing of the request for a restraining order is here.  A ruling is expected today. 

The group is protesting a shooting of a black man, Jamar Clark, by Minneapolis Police, and has already blocked lanes of a major local freeway in protest.  It is demanding a special prosecutor, not a grand jury handle the shooting of Clark.

The Mall of American is not in the city of Minneapolis, but rather in suburban Bloomington.  The mall’s owners point to:

a similar protest held on December 20, 2014 involving approximately 1,000 protesters inside the mall. A number of the demonstrators were arrested and charged with trespassing. The legal action maintains that MOA and its tenants suffered irreparable harm, including reduced guests and sales. The mall says traffic counts for the number of cars entering parking ramps on that day were down 15 percent from statistics from the previous five years, which translates into 24,000 fewer shoppers. Mall attorneys maintain that many retailers reported double digit decreases in sales on December 20,2014, the date of that demonstration.

As private property, the Mall of America is under no obligation to host demonstrations., and in fact has a policy against demonstrations on its premises.

If a restraining order is issued and #BLM goes ahead with its plans, there could be quite a showdown at the mall on the day before Christmas Eve.  Which, I imagine, is exactly what #BlackLivesMatter wants.