They claim “police brutality is modern lynching,” or something.

Via Daily Dot:

Outside a St. Louis, Mo., courthouse famous for its gruesome history, three protesters gathered on Friday to staged a mock lynching in advance of a grand jury decision in the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black teenager.

Around noon on Friday, three protesters bound their hands with rope and pulled nooses around their necks at the base of a leafless tree mere yards from the steps of the St. Louis Old Courthouse. The actions of the protesters were intended to raise awareness about a harrowing, albeit controversial, statistic: that every 28 hours a black man is killed by a police officer in the United States.

The three activists, who identified themselves as T-Dubb-O, Rika Tyler, and Rae, told Free Thought Project writer Cassandra Fairbanks that the action was intended to spark conversation while a grand jury in St. Louis nears a decision on whether to indict Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer that on Aug. 9, 2014 shot to death unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown.