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As curfews lifted around the Bay Area after nearly a week of demonstrations — many peaceful, others erupting into violence — the seventh day of protests on Thursday evening remained passionate and peaceful.
On the same day as the memorial service for George Floyd, who was killed last week by a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on his neck, enthusiastic crowds marched, caravanned and rallied around the Bay Area.
San Jose joined Alameda County, Contra Costa County, Oakland, Berkeley, Palo Alto and a slew of other Bay Area jurisdictions in lifting their curfews Thursday, following a night of massive but overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations throughout the region.
Still, San Jose Police Chief Eddie Garcia expressed his fears earlier Thursday that without a curfew, trouble could start again.
“I’m not going to tell you I’m not concerned,” Garcia said during an extraordinary news conference Thursday when he defended his department’s use of tear gas, flashbang grenades and rubber bullets last weekend when protests escalated to violence and looting by splinter groups. Having a curfew, he said, “was extremely helpful for our police officers and for the health of the city.”
By 8:30 p.m. Thursday, however, the time of Wednesday’s curfew, protesters in San Jose were trickling away from City Hall, where they had spent the hot afternoon kneeling on the sidewalk in moments of silence and marching to Cesar Chavez Plaza several blocks away. San Francisco 49ers player Ian Williams was in the crowd.
At one point, a black police officer at the intersection of 5th and Santa Clara streets rolled down his window to enormous cheers. “I appreciate you,” the officer called out the window.
“Honk your horn!” a protester called back.
In Walnut Creek, a group of religious leaders gathered to pray for peace and denounce the use of force Monday night by local police trying to break up a crowd of demonstrators on a freeway onramp. One young woman, who is a member of the Mount Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church, suffered a head injury when she was struck by a rubber bullet.
“We know the tactics used in these protests are symbols of the police brutality we’re experiencing in our community and that too often take the life of our black and brown kids,” said the Rev. Leslie Takahashi from the Mount Diablo church.
The peaceful scenes around the Bay Area Thursday offered a sharp contrast to last weekend, when some demonstrators ransacked stores around Walnut Creek’s Broadway Plaza, Emeryville’s Bay Street stores, Bayfair Center in San Leandro and downtown San Francisco. in San Jose, some demonstrators picked up wooden boards from a construction site and wielded them at police. One officer was punched in the face and briefly fell unconscious.
It was the second night of calm in San Jose. On Wednesday night, demonstrators left so peacefully shortly after curfew that officers were “practically falling asleep at the command post,” Police Cpt. Jason Dwyer said during the news conference Thursday. “Watching the crowd move about freely, we’re letting them take the streets because we know they’re not hurting anyone.”
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, during the same news conference, acknowledged that curfews had been necessary to “get a handle on what was a brutally difficult situation over the weekend” and that the city will evaluate day to day whether curfews need to be reimposed.
However, the mayor said, he and the City Council would impose them again “very reluctantly because I believe this is a very substantial imposition on the civil liberties of our residents. Nobody in this department, nobody in the city intends to live under a curfew for any extended period of time. Nobody believes that’s a tolerable way to live. This is not a state of martial law. That’s not what we’re going to become.”
In Fremont, a city still under curfew orders, the crowd broke up well before sunset. Hundreds had marched south on Fremont Boulevard in the hot afternoon sun, chanting, “No Justice, No peace” and “f***k your curfew.”
“I feel something different in the air, that we’re going to actually make some strides,” said Giselle McNeill, 44, of Fairfield, who came to Washington High School in Fremont Thursday afternoon with her 16-year-old daughter Kierra to protest Floyd’s death.
Fremont Mayor Lily Mei, who caused a stir during a protest Tuesday when she refused to kneel at the police department when protestors asked her to, joined up with the demonstration Thursday at its terminus at the police department. She said she offered to pray with the crowd, but organizers declined. She explained on Facebook that she didn’t kneel Tuesday becauses she only kneels for God, but wanted to express her solidarity by marching Tuesday and showing up Thursday.
“I think it’s very important that people have the opportunity to gather to express their grief and their feelings and I’m very grateful that there was a great turnout and it was very peaceful,” she said of Thursday’s march.
In Mountain View, about 1,000 people, most of them teenagers and young people, marched down El Camino Real Thursday afternoon. Los Altos High School junior Ramirez Lopez, 16, said he’s tired of the racism that black people like himself experience. Just last month, he said, he was detained for an hour by police officers “for no reason.”
“It’s sad we have to do this,” Lopez said. “You go out every day not knowing if you’ll come back.”
Mountain View Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga marched alongside her two teenage daughters from San Antonio Road to city hall at Castro Street on the city’s historic commercial strip
“It’s so promising to see young people out there and I hope the ones that can vote take the opportunity to make a change,” Abe-Koga said. “I have two daughters and they were the ones who told me about this protest. They were getting notes on Instagram and Snapchat.”
Police presence was minimal and no police in riot gear could be seen.
At Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland, many gathered on picnic blankets to listen to speakers denouncing police brutality, health care workers joined a kneel-in to protest racism and police abuse. In San Francisco, a “Caravan of Justice” car parade honked it way through town, from Golden Gate Park through neigborhoods from the Haight, to the Marina, Castro, Richmond and West Portal.
Staff writers George Kelly and Maggie Angst contributed to this story.
