US congressional staffers stage walkout to join protesters

US congressional staffers have staged a walkout to join demonstrators who protest against racial profiling and police killings of unarmed black men in the country.

Dozens of staffers, including members of the Congressional Black Associates group, and other Capitol Hill employees, walked out from their offices in Washington DC on Thursday afternoon.

The demonstrators raised their hands in a reference to the “Hands up, don’t shoot.”

“We’re coming out here to let them know, no, it’s not business as usual, our lives matter, we’re asserting our humanity and our dignity,” said a congressional staffer.

“Even though we go to work in these prestigious buildings among prestigious people, we go home and we’re still profiled, we still are part of those statistics,” the staffer added. “It could have been any one of us who was Eric Garner, who was Mike Brown.”

Demonstrations started out peacefully across the United States in protest to a grand jury decision not to indict a white New York police officer who choked unarmed black man Eric Garner to death in July.

The protests came amid angry demonstrations against the death of African-American teenager Michael Brown, who was shot dead by another white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson in August.

Berkeley has been the scene of nightly demonstrations all week. Protesters blocked traffic on highways on Tuesday and called for justice for the slain African-Americans.

In a bid to disperse peaceful protesters in Berkeley, police threw smoke bomb and fired tear gas at the crowd. Several protesters were arrested.

Thousands of university students from 40 medical schools also staged protests on Wednesday to simulate being dead to protest racial inequality in medical treatment and the police killings.

At Harvard Medical School, some 100 students and faculty participated in the demonstration. Similar protests were held in New York, Boston, Washington, Atlanta and other cities.