Conflict at city beach fuels rally about race
Activists organized a sit-in at Sausalito beach on Sunday in response to a confrontation between a Black man and a property owner.
The conflict on Oct. 8 was captured on video and posted to social media. It shows the property owner telling Marcus Hall to leave Swede’s Beach, a public access area at the end of Valley Street.
Hall was sitting on a fence after work. He said he visits the beach during his lunch or after work to enjoy the view and relax.
“I do feel like I was racially profiled to the fullest,” he said. “As a Black man, and brown people deal with this too, I experience some sort of version of this almost every day. Unfortunately a lot of us are desensitized to it, unbothered. It’s not surprising because it’s not new, and I think that’s the saddest part.”
The property owner is Mohamed Karah, founder of Karah Winery.
“The people here and the police, they don’t want you here because this is not public. It’s private,” Karah said on video before threatening to call the police. “People don’t want you here, you understand?”
Karah, who is of Libyan descent, denied a racial motive. He said he was unsure of Hall’s intentions and that the video only caught a portion of the interaction. The day of the incident, he said, he noticed Hall lying near his fence and asked himto leave, but Hall responded with a middle finger.
“I started raising my voice so the neighbors would come to help because I am an 86-year- old living alone and with a broken leg,” Karah said. “He turned sideways so his camera can focus on his expensive clothes, his sandwich, his face and me in the background. His mission is and was to divide our community and become a national hero in a time where we should work together to heal our wounds.”
Karah said Hall visited the beach multiple times that week. He said a neighbor who is a single mother with a 16-year-old thought Hall was “homeless” and “had to spray him with water to force him to leave.”
Hall said he is not homeless and denied insulting Karah. He
confirmed he was sprayed with a hose by the other neighbor, but he said he was told a different story as to why.
“They claimed it was an accident, but it happened on two occasions,” he said. “What made me question that person’s intentions was after I had left a note on the fence saying, ‘ You’re getting me wet with your hose,’ they accused me of being on their property.”
Sausalito police Capt. Bill Fraass said Hall filed a police report on Wednesday, about a week after the incident. Police officers followed up and also took a statement from Karah.
Fraass declined to provide a copy of the report, but said that there is no proof anyone broke the law.
Police Chief John Rohrbacher said Hall was lawfully visiting the public beach and that the incident is unusual. He said the police department has received a few calls about offleash dogs or people violating county health mandates.
The incident happened about three months after the City Council passed a Black Lives Matter resolution, condemning
systemic racism and promoting racial equality. Sausalito, whichwas a industrial hub for shipbuilding during WorldWar II, became an enclave for White people after the war when housing restrictions barred Black workers from living in town. This pushed Black families to live inM arin City.
Damian Morgan, a Marin City resident and a friend of Hall, said he was disgusted by Karah’s behavior.
“I’ve been there a handful
of times and all my White friends who live in town have been there hundreds of times,” said Morgan, who is also sits on the Marin City Community Services District board. “Point being is, he harassed my friend.”
Hall said he didn’t want to draw a lot of attention to the incident, but felt like it’s a microcosm of racial inequality, disparities and fear in the Bay Area, California and the nation.
“These things are not
new, and there are huge racial disparities in education, housing, policing and health care in this county,” he said. “I think that’s what I want to point out to people who are supportive of me and even those who are apologetic of this man’s behavior, which is that racism or racial profiling is, for the most part, only allowed by the power behind it. If the power structure didn’t allow for this, there would be a lot less of it.”