Their aim, they say, is to ‘reclaim the public space from criminal elements masquerading as protesters’ after days of demonstrations over police abuses that left 69 people dead.

“The world didn’t seem like a dark place. It seemed like a simple place. It felt like everyone else was living in a dream world, and I wasn’t. Even though it was the other way around.”

Texas country singer and songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker, who wrote the classic “Mr. Bojangles,” has died at age 78.