High school and college students in several U.S. cities ditched class on Monday to protest against a grand jury decision not to indict Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson, who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in August. Anger from the decision swelled in the St. Louis suburb and across the country over Thanksgiving weekend.

The young man, 18-year-old Brown, was killed by officer Wilson with dispute as to whether the shooting was self-defense or racially motivated.

"Michael Brown's death was a catalyst for a lot of issues in this country," Karisa Tavassoli, a 20-year-old student at Washington University in St. Louis, said according to Chicago Tribune.

Tavassoli's campus had around 300 students fighting frigid temperatures to stage a walkout demonstration on the first day back in classes.

"We are fighting for the oppressed," she said.

Protesters also included students in California, who shut down two busy intersections near Stanford University. Meanwhile, hundreds of young people near Boston blocked the street in front of Harvard University. Similar protests were seen at schools in New York, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.

On the West Coast, about 30 protesters in Los Angeles carried signs reading "Ferguson is everywhere" and "Black lives matter" and marched from a police station in South-Central Los Angeles to an intersection where an unarmed black man, 25-year-old Ezell Ford, was shot and killed by police just two days after Brown's slaying.

In Seattle, where the police department is under monitoring from the federal government over excessive force allegations, nearly 200 people met to bring attention to race relations and police tactics in a peaceful protest.

The worldwide attention of this case has led to changes to police action in situations similar to those in Ferguson. On Monday, President Barack Obama asked to allot $263 million to pay for thousands of body cameras for police officers to wear as well as additional training in responses to similar situations.

Officer Wilson, while defending his innocence, resigned last week.

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