As the most widespread American social movement in a half-century continues into its third week, anti-police brutality protesters made their voices heard in the Bay Area Thursday.
More than a dozen protests across the region were scheduled for the day, including a sit-in outside an Alameda police station and a skateboard run in support of Black Lives Matter in San Francisco.
Though the racial justice movement was re-sparked by a Minneapolis police officer killing of George Floyd, a black man, more instances of police violence have become part of the protest.
In Alameda Thursday afternoon, about 250 people engaged in a peaceful sit-in to decry the detainment of a black man for dancing in the street. Protesters at that event called upon the city to decrease funding to police.
Across the bay in San Francisco, skateboarders gathered at Twin Peaks for a “Bomb Hills for BLM” session as the organizer “Re N”, who only said she is from the Bay Area, spoke to them through a megaphone. A number of skaters carried signs in support of Black Lives Matter and calling for defunding of the police as they took off from the city’s second highest point for a long ride down the steep curves of Upper Market Street to the foot of the bay at the Embarcadero.
Reporter Peter Hegarty and photojournalists Karl Mondon and Jane Tyska contributed to this story.
