What Is Black Lives Matter Doing Now? Weekly Protests For Police Reform Held In New York City After Eric Garner Death

A mass crowd of protesters gathered to celebrate Monday the two-year anniversary of a weekly Black Lives Matter demonstration in New York City that initially began as a response to the death of Staten Island resident Eric Garner on July 17, 2014. The organizers plan to keep rallying every week under the Donald Trump administration.

"We've built a consciousness to respond to police and make the point that black lives matter and police need to be held accountable," said founding member of NYC Shut-It-Down and hospital food service worker, Mike Bento. "If you don't do these things, these are people that are going to be coming after you."

The protests, named "People's Monday" focused on police-involved death cases across the country. Protesters gathered every Monday in busy Manhattan areas like Bryant Park, Rockefeller Center and Grand Central, the New York Daily News reported.

The chokehold death of Garner gave protestors a battle cry after that incident: "I can't breathe," Garner said, as a New York police officer wrapped him in a chokehold. His mother and nearly a dozen people were arrested last month outside Trump Tower as they protested Trump’s cabinet picks.

Bento, a Harlem-born activist, said he had been arrested at least a dozen times by the New York Police Department. Last January, Bento led a protest disrupting Mayor de Blasio's speech at a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday event held in a Brooklyn church.

"Broken windows policing is not in MLK’s legacy," Bento shouted. "The hiring of Bill Bratton, the architect of New York’s new Jim Crow, is not in MLK’s legacy." Police officers eventually escorted the protesters out of the church.

But on Monday, a dozen member of NYPD's Strategic Response Group followed roughly 100 protesters as they marched from Grand Central to Times Square. No arrests were made.

"There's a lot of families who are grateful to us for keeping the names of their loved ones alive and showing they do matter," Shut-It-Down member Kimberly Ortiz told the New York Daily News. "We're going to continue doing this until we don't have to anymore."