San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Demonstrators head out, ignoring Schaaf ’s plea
Protesters refused to heed official pleas to stay home Saturday, instead taking to Bay Area streets, where police officers in riot gear readied for another night of outrage over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
In Oakland, crowds started to gather well before dark, chanting and yelling in front of boarded up stores and buildings damaged and looted the night before.
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf called on people to stay home Saturday night to prevent those who wanted to smash windows, vandalize and loot businesses from hiding among peaceful protesters as they did Friday night.
“Protest and free speech are a part of Oakland’s DNA,” the mayor said at a Saturday afternoon news conference, “but I am asking people to stay home. These vandals are using peaceful protesters as a shield.”
Angry crowds across the country ignored such requests as well as more stringent curfews.
Hundreds of people defied the 8 p.m. curfew in Minneapolis, challenging police at the city’s fenced off 5th Precinct. Similar curfews were in place in more than a dozen U.S. cities.
In Utah, Gov. Gary Herbert activated the state National Guard after protesters were seen with rifles in Salt Lake City.
Authorities were ramping up law enforcement across the country after a deadly and devastating night on Friday that came in the wake of Floyd’s death after he was handcuffed by police and despite repeatedly saying he was unable to breathe an officer pressed a knee onto his neck. The officer was charged with murder Friday.
On Saturday afternoon, a protest in San Francisco drew about 1,000 people who made the short march from the Main Library to City Hall. Smaller groups of protesters made their way throughout the city. But as darkness fell, looters in San Francisco broke into a CVS on Market Street. Other businesses reportedly suffering damage included Nordstrom Rack.
Looting in Oakland appeared to happen again Saturday. Dozens of people at dusk were seen breaking into and taking items from the Best Buy located on Mandela Parkway in Oakland on Saturday night, according to overhead video from ABC7.
Still, the crowds in Oakland that had gathered by sunset were much smaller Saturday than Friday night’s. Kendall Cantave was among the crowd Saturday who defied Schaaf, standing at 14th Street and Broadway in Oakland early evening Saturday after skipping the protest the night before.
The world needs change, he said, and the nation’s leaders have not listened to people’s demands for too long, said the San Francisco resident. “There comes a time when people gotta come together,” he said. “We need unity. This is a peaceful movement.”
But on Friday, 40 suspected looters were detained and another 17 demonstrators arrested in a downtown Oakland protest that quickly devolved into a vandalism and looting spree as demonstrators smashed windows and set fires inside buildings in a show of outrage over Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis. As many as 60 other protesters could be arrested for looting after police review video evidence, interim Police Chief Susan Manheimer said.
Manheimer said 31 first responders were injured, mostly from thrown objects, including 17 Oakland police officers and seven from other law enforcement agencies called in to assist.
The vandalism left the downtown streets covered in broken glass that crunched as cars drove over it early Saturday. Graffiti covered the walls of buildings along Broadway.
Anthony Leviege, 47, returned to Oakland Saturday after participating in Friday’s chaotic protest to “support the cause.”
“People are mad. Everybody out here makes a difference,” he said, adding he wasn’t concerned about violence breaking out again.
“I’m concerned about the violence going on by the police and the system,” he said.
As the crowd continued to grow in Oakland just before dark, Lilliannia Ayers, 40, of Oakland, stood outside her blackowned business Queen Hippie Gypsy on 14th Street, a couple blocks from Frank Ogawa Plaza. Protesters broke her storefront window Friday night, and she vowed to stay all night outside her store Saturday to prevent any more damage.
“This is my business and I’m from Oakland and I will be here tonight,” she said. “My business is blackowned and the original messages were our lives matter and our businesses matter too.”
Earlier Saturday, Ben Hopfer swept shards of glass from the sidewalk outside Darling’s Elixirs, a bar at 17th Street and Broadway. Hopfer lives in the Uptown neighborhood and attended the protest Friday. But he said he left at midnight, when it began spinning out of control.
Hopfer came back Saturday morning with a broom, plastic bucket and dolly to roll trash away.
The chaotic events coincided with a shooting at the Ronald V. Dellums federal building downtown that left one contract security officer dead, and another critically wounded. Manheimer said at the press conference that it was “likely there was a targeting of uniformed officers.”
Schaaf expressed frustration in a video statement Saturday, saying that the “justified rage, anger, and grief at the statesponsored killing of George Floyd” had crossed a line. Blackowned businesses and merchants in Chinatown had suffered damage, Schaaf said, suggesting that the destruction of property undermined the political statement of the protest.
Carl Chan, the president of Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, spent much of Saturday morning fielding calls from distraught senior citizens. With the threat of COVID19 compounded by the specter of more protests, many were afraid to leave their homes to go grocery shopping, Chan said.
The city has long been a hub for protests that often leave severe damage in the downtown core, and surrounding neighborhoods of Chinatown, Uptown and Auto Row. Merchants and city politicians widely perceive the trouble as coming from outside agitators who pour in from other cities.
Residents walking through or cleaning up the debris Saturday said that’s what happened Friday night, too.
“This is the aftermath of what people who are not from Oakland do,” Sanders said.
Oakland residents might march and raise a ruckus, maybe even turn over a garbage can, he said, but won’t trash their city.
“My thing is it makes us look like were tearing everything apart,” he said.” I just feel bad for these small businesses that are already suffering.”
Oakland business leaders also blamed outsiders. Barbara Leslie, CEO of the Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, said the destruction was caused by “a small band of wellmobilized vandals,”
“We will not let outoftown individuals undermine this legitimate protest and destroy our local economy,” she said. “We will work with our elected leaders, law enforcement, and any other parties to hold accountable those who tried to destroy our city.”
Jana Pastena, who owns the Tribune Tavern, Chop Bar and Calavera restaurants in Oakland with her husband, Chris, said the call to end the violence is not just about the vandalism.
“This isn’t about glass,” she said. “I think you all know that black lives are more important than broken glass.”
The vandals and looters, she said, draw attention away from the intent of the demonstrations — calling out racial injustice and deaths of black men at the hands of police.
Friday’s protest turned ugly after dark when dozens of demonstrators began smashing windows, spraypainting buildings and starting fires in trash bins, business entrances and the middle of the street. At one point, a group ripped the protective plywood off a Walgreen’s store, used it to smash the windows and then started hauling out armloads of merchandise. Police fired rounds of teargas in numerous attempts to disperse demonstrators. People downtown Saturday morning tiptoed through the debris and took photos of the destruction with their phones. Soot and ash clung to an entrance of the 19th Street BART Station, where vandals had lighted a blaze on the sidewalk. Spray paint splashed across store awnings, brick facades and new apartment buildings. On some blocks, it seemed no business had been spared.
A demonstration in San Jose followed the same arc — starting peacefully, then turning into a melee that included small fires, skirmishes between protesters and police and two people injured when an SUV struck two people then sped off. At one point, protesters blocked traffic in both directions on Highway 101, smashing the windows of cars.
In San Francisco, the crowd was peaceful during Saturday afternoon. Protesters chanted “Jail killer cops” in the Mission District when they stood in front of the police station. Protesters tried, unsuccessfully, to get onto the Bay Bridge Saturday afternoon and again later Saturday evening.
“There are two pandemics going on,” said Harley Evans, a protest organizer. “I’m more afraid of the pandemic that is the police.”
Alejandro Serrano, Matthias Gaffni, and Rachel Swan are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: alejandro.serrano@sfchronicle.com, matthias.gaffni@sfchronicle.com, rswan@sfchronicle.com, mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com