Activists in S.F. protest shootings of black men
A group of demonstrators in San Francisco on Saturday protested against what they said were the growing number of blacks and Latinos who have been killed by police.
The protest was part of a larger effort to call attention to the one-year anniversary of the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, an unarmed black man shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. The U.S. Justice Department did not find fault with the officer who killed Brown, but activists believe Brown’s death highlights a larger issue of injustice.
“We are still demanding justice for Michael Brown. All of the Michael Browns in this country. All of the people who have been cut down, murdered by police, who did not have to die this way,” Joey Johnson, an organizer with the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, said to people passing by the protest at Market and Powell streets.
Johnson’s group hopes to raise enough money to send protesters and families who have lost loved ones in police shootings to New York for an Oct. 24 march. But the group still has a long way to go to get to its goal of raising $50,000.
Part of the challenge is getting people to remember the outrage felt when Brown died, organizers said.
“A young black man being killed by the police is not new,” Johnson said, but what was new last year was that people, “rose up with determination” to speak up about it.
Last year, Johnson remembers standing in a sea of people protesting in Ferguson. But on Saturday the 15 protesters with him were outnumbered by police.
“People with a conscience can see these things go on,” said Stephanie Tang, one of the protesters. “They can accept it or they can refuse to go along with it.”
In Oakland, the scene of many past protests against police violence, there was a rally scheduled to mark what activists have called an increase in police violence against blacks. But it was difficult to tell if anyone showed up.
At 5 p.m., an hour after the advertised start of the rally, 30 or so people filled the corner of Frank Ogawa Plaza, where protests usually begin. But few, if any, were there to rally against police injustice or in memory of Michael Brown or Sandra Bland, who was found dead in a Texas jail cell after being stopped for failing to signal a lane change.
“What protest?” said one woman when asked if she were there for Oakland’s part of the nationwide Day of Rage protests.
Perhaps as telling was the absence of police. Aside from an occasional passing officer, there was no police presence.
Small or nonexistent crowds were apparently common across the country. On Twitter, people in cities as disparate as Little Rock, New York, Seattle and Los Angeles complained about the turnout for similar rallies.
Perhaps the lack of a protest in Oakland should not have been a surprise. Unlike many Oakland protests, there was little advance publicity — no posters or social media posts — and no buzz.