Sahre Davis said she had to leave work early yesterday because she felt physically ill after hearing that a grand jury would not indict the NYPD officer who killed Staten Island resident Eric Garner with a prohibited chokehold. "Who invented this system? Or this pretense of a system?" the Bronx resident asked as she marched up Broadway. "That's the word here, pretense. Because there was no justice served today."

Thousands of New Yorkers joined her in protesting the grand jury's refusal to punish Officer Daniel Pantaleo, shutting down the West Side Highway, the Brooklyn Bridge, and blocking traffic throughout midtown Manhattan. An NYPD spokesperson told us 83 people were arrested during the night of protests, and most were charged with disorderly conduct. (The spokesperson could not provide information about the other charges.)

Initially the protesters' goal was to disrupt the lighting of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, but a maze of barricades and tens of thousands of revelers diluted the demonstration's strength and prevented them from getting close to the televised ceremony.

Groups of protesters began sitting down to block traffic near Rockefeller Center, and some were quickly arrested. Police officers used barricades like human spatulas, mashing and herding hundreds of people onto the sidewalk and away from traffic.

Nakim Christmas was one of the protesters who sat down in front of Radio City Music Hall.

"The police came to arrest us, but they only arrested the white girls who were sitting next to me," he said. "I told them, 'Usually I'm the target, but you don't want to arrest me tonight, it'd make for a bad picture in the media.' "

After marching through Midtown, Columbus Circle, and parts of the Upper West Side, several large groups converged to block traffic on the West Side Highway, where demonstrators skirmished with police several times. Officers brandished batons and shoved one man's face into a hedgerow as they arrested him, while protesters tossed dirt clods into the crowd. Traffic was blocked and delayed for roughly an hour.

"I think we should be burning shit up and turning shit over," said Derek Flint, a personal trainer from Westchester who traveled to the city to protest.

"Look at Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin, Ramarley Graham, that little boy in Cleveland. I'm tired of this bullshit. This is about changing the system."

One driver stopped in traffic rolled down her window.

"I think they should have convicted him," she told several protesters of the Garner verdict, "But why are you blocking traffic?" Another woman approached her car and replied, "I'm sure it sucks to be stuck in traffic, but it probably sucks more to be dead."

The mood was relatively calm and somber at the spot on Staten Island where Garner died. At its height, the crowd at Garner's memorial site swelled to 100 protestors, many of whom seemed more sad than visibly enraged. There was no angry chanting or attempts to disrupt traffic. Councilwoman Debbie Rose and Public Advocate Tish James both spoke, calling for peaceful protests in honor of Garner.

James asked for a moment of silence, before telling the crowd that it needs to take its emotion and channel it in to focusing on reforms and changes in the law. "We all recognize that the eyes of the world are looking at Staten Island, but we want everyone to know that Staten Island is not Ferguson," James said. "There will not be any violence."

Those gathered at the site joined in prayer, and some spoke about Garner with a personal familiarity. They simply called him "Eric," remembering stories about him to one another.

Gia Dupree, a 28-year-old Staten Island resident, said she cried when she heard the news of the grand jury's decision. "There was a moment when I was supportive of body cameras, now I don't even think that's an option," Dupree told us. "The problem is much larger than that. There's a police culture that needs to be addressed in a very complex way." To Dupree, body cameras are "just more policing," and "adding another layer of authority won't help."

By 10:30 or so, the tenor of the march through Manhattan had changed, or at least the policing did. NYPD kept their distance and stopped attempting to corral the demonstrators, allowing them to block traffic with impunity.

Patricia Johnson and her husband were walking with their infant son, Caleb, when they stopped to admire the protest in Midtown. Johnson, who lives in Brooklyn, believes the protesters will need to take more serious measures to be heard.

"You gotta hit people where it hurts, in their pockets," she explained. "That's gonna cause the people in charge to stop and say, we'd better change things before it gets out of hand. You can rally, you can march all day, but if you're still spending your money, you're still riding these trains, you're still being productive in the economy, they're gonna brush past you."

Willard Scott thinks that perhaps it could be simpler than that.

"The main thing that we should do is vote," he said. "Because what's going on in America. I don't think any cop is going to be convicted of any crime. If they are here to protect us, who's going to protect us from them?"

Scott said he traveled to Midtown from Queens to let his family see the Christmas tree, "but my whole concept changed when I saw the protest."

"I was gonna bring my daughters to see the tree, now I'm letting my daughters see something that's important to their life, that can affect their life for the rest of their lives. They're out here protesting for a human life. That changed my whole perspective."

Additional reporting by Scott Heins.