An estimated 250 people took part in a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest Saturday afternoon in Martinez, staring at the city’s Waterfront Park and ending in front of the main courthouse building downtown.
The protest, during which participants spent eight minutes and 46 seconds kneeling to symbolize the time a Minneapolis police officer knelt on the neck of George Floyd, who died soon after, was one of a number of similar events around the Bay Area Saturday. There were no reports of any of the protests turning violent or destructive.
In addition to actions in San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland, a number of smaller Bay Area cities – Benicia, Burlingame, Morgan Hill, Millbrae, San Carlos, Brentwood, Fairfax, Larkspur, Hayward, Vacaville – hosted peaceful marches and gatherings on Saturday, almost three weeks after Floyd’s death.
A larger, but still basically peaceful, protest took place in Vallejo, where several hundred people marched from City Hall to the city’s police headquarters – about a mile – to protest the June 2 shooting death by police of Sean Monterrosa, a 22-year-old San Francisco man who Vallejo police believed had a handgun in his pocket. It turned out Monterrosa had a hammer in his pocket.
The “Say Their Names” protest in Berkeley included more than 1,000 marchers Saturday afternoon who went from the Rockridge BART station to Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley.
Several protesters were arrested Sunday evening on and near the upper deck of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a protest that effectively closed westbound Interstate Highway 80 for over an hour.
The California Highway Patrol said westbound lanes on the bridge west of Treasure Island were shut down by Black Lives Matter protesters at about 4:45 p.m. By 6:30 p.m., two of the five westbound lanes had reopened, and traffic was moving slowly through the area, the CHP said.