A press release sent by the protesters today explains their actions and lays out a list of their demands:

Today, we have decided to put our bodies in the street for four hours and twenty-eight minutes. We do this to represent the 4.5 hours Mike Brown was left in the street after being killed by a police officer. We do this to challenge a reality where every 28 hours a Black person is killed by the police, security, or vigilantes. We are responding to the call from Black leaders, locally and nationally, to show up in solidarity and disrupt business as usual. We wish to lift up the demands issued out of Ferguson: fergusonaction.com/demands.

We are a group of white people, primarily Jews and queers, calling on our communities to stop and take note of the constant and devastating injustices committed by white supremacy. As white folks participating in direct action and nonviolent civil disobedience, our privilege affords us more safety than Black folks and folks of color exercising the same rights. We recognize that white folks taking political action is seen as more palatable, visible, or admirable. We urge white people to step up but not over and to center Black leadership and liberation. The liberation of the oppressor is tied up in the liberation of the oppressed. ...

FERGUSON DEMANDS: 
OUR VISION FOR A NEW AMERICA 
WE WANT JUSTICE FOR MICHAEL BROWN. WE WANT FREEDOM FOR OUR COMMUNITIES


We Want an End to all Forms of Discrimination and the Full Recognition of our Human Rights


We Want An Immediate End To Police Brutality And the Murder Of Black, Brown & All Oppressed People


We Want Full Employment For Our People


We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter Of Human Beings
We Want an End to the School to Prison Pipeline & Quality Education for All


We Want Freedom from Mass Incarceration and an End to the Prison Industrial Complex


NATIONAL DEMANDS


1. The De-militarization of Local Law Enforcement across the country


2. A Comprehensive Review of systemic abuses by local police departments, including the publication of data relating to racially biased policing, and the development of best practices.


3. Repurposing of law enforcement funds to support community based alternatives to incarceration and the conditioning of DOJ funding on the ending of discriminatory policing and the adoption of DOJ best practices


4. A Congressional Hearing investigating the criminalization of communities of color, racial profiling, police abuses and torture by law enforcement


5. Support the Passage of the End Racial Profiling Act


6. The Obama Administration develops, legislates and enacts a
National Plan of Action for Racial Justice