Yesterday I attended my first protest in the City of San Francisco. The protest was organized by several groups in response to the death of Charles Hill who was shot and killed by BART police last month. In addition, the hacker group Anonymous joined the protest after BART officials shut down cellphone service at several stations during a previous event.
This was the third protest in as many weeks and by all accounts it was much more tame than the previous two. In all there were roughly 100 protesters in addition to photographers, TV crews, and a huge police presence. The protesters were loud but mostly peaceful and in the end there were only 2 arrests. I imagine that this was partly due to the overwhelming amount of SFPD that were well organized and wielding riot gear. The protest began at Civic Center and moved down Market St. making stops at the Powell and Montgomery stations before ending at the Embarcadero Station. This is where the arrests were made and was the one point that I felt like the situation might get wild. It was a scary and exciting feeling being in the middle of protesters and police in a subway station. Luckily, everything cooled out and the protesters headed back to Civic Center.
Below are some of the pictures I captured of the event (enlarge by clicking on the picture). Thank you as always for taking the time to check out Dirty Thirty Photography!
