From [HERE] On the evening of Nov. 25, 2014, Rebecka Jackson-Moeser, 30, marched with a crowd of thousands from Leimart Park to L.A. City Hall to protest the decision of a Missouri grand jury to not indict the white police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson. At around 9:30 p.m., Jackson-Moeser joined a group of about 100 protesters that split off from the main rally at City Hall and managed to walk onto the 101 freeway downtown, blocking traffic in both directions.

Within minutes, officers from the California Highway Patrol arrived in riot gear and began to disperse the protesters. Jackson-Moeser was there with her younger brother, the two of them part of a group of protesters the police were forcing to exit the freeway near Grand Avenue. “There was a whole line of them,” she tells L.A. Weekly. “It felt like a military action of them just like forcing us off the highway."

Jackson-Moeser, who is from St. Louis, was a master's student in theater at the California Institute of the Arts at the time of the protest. Currently, she works as a stage manager for a theater company in L.A.

The complaint alleges the CHP violated her First Amendment right to freedom of speech and her Fourth Amendment right against the use of excessive force.

A video captures the moment Jackson-Moeser was injured. She is exiting the freeway, walking backward up the hill. After she turns her back to the skirmish line of police, an officer swings a baton with a backhand motion that strikes the left side of her face. The blow split her left earlobe and opened a gash on the side of her head, requiring 20 stitches altogether and leaving her with a concussion, the complaint states.