Photo by Michael Chang

• US envoy Steve Witkoff will meet Qatar’s prime minister in Spain as Egypt and Qatar advance a ceasefire plan trading all hostages for Israel’s Gaza withdrawal. Over 20 nations have condemned the planned expansion as a “dangerous escalation,” and Germany has halted military exports that could be used in Gaza. [Associated Press]
• According to social media reports, Los Angeles protesters are now referring to ICE rallies as “LA Music Festival” on Tik Tok to avoid censorship. Groups have been steadfastly conducting peaceful actions in front of the Metro Detention Center as well as the Federal Building. [Threads]

• Giants pitcher Kai-Wei Teng led the team 5-0 against the Washington Nationals in the first win of his career at Oracle Park, which he dedicated to his dad on Taiwan’s Father’s Day. [Bay Area News Group]
• One child was killed and another injured Friday evening in Burlingame when a vehicle believed to have been driven by a 19-year-old San Mateo woman struck them on the sidewalk. [KRON4]
• BART temporarily suspended service on its red and green lines Saturday morning, and the yellow line experienced major delays due to power issues that led to single-tracking in the Transbay Tube, which was restored around 7:45 a.m. [KPIX]

• A man and a woman are in stable condition after being shot in North Oakland Friday night around 11:30 p.m. by a group of people who fired over a dozen rounds of bullets at them on the 800 block of 46th Street. [Bay Area News Group]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

• The suspect in a bombing at Target in San Ramon last week has been tied to a $4 million, multi-state ATM heist crew that allegedly used disguises, power tools, and blowtorches to rob banks across the West Coast. Prosecutors say the crew, including mostly Chilean nationals, posed as construction workers and even tunneled through walls to get to the cash. [Bay Area News Group]
• Yina Marcela Ramos Bello, 30, was killed and her two young sons critically injured after an SUV ran a red light and struck their car in San Mateo Thursday night. Police say the Ford driver, whose name is withheld, wasn’t impaired and are investigating why he failed to stop. [KRON4]
• The Sonoma County Fair kicks off Friday night with its famous World's Ugliest Dog Contest, with this year’s theme, "Hot Dogs and Cool Cats." [NBC Bay Area]

• During a road rage incident in San Mateo, a man was chased and stabbed with a chisel after a honking dispute while parking a customer’s truck, and his brother was also attacked when he tried to intervene. [KTVU]
• Santa Rosa 15-year-old Joyce Kristin Albino has been found safe in the South Bay after missing for over a week under circumstances similar to those of Fremont teen Katie Hong, who is still unaccounted for. [KRON4]

• Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) and Solidarity Organizing Initiative (SOI) are hosting a two-part virtual training Tuesday, August 5, to equip white allies with clear strategies and tools for supporting immigrant communities. [Mobilize]

National:

• Black labor organizer Chris Smalls has returned to the US after being violently detained by Israeli forces during a humanitarian aid mission to Gaza. Smalls, best known for unionizing an Amazon warehouse, was the only activist held in custody — an act he and others believe was racially motivated. [The Grio]
• Angelica Vargas, a brave and determined woman known as “Angie the ICE Chaser,” is tailing immigration agents across LA, catching them on video as they commit apparent traffic violations to evade her. She also honks and shouts warnings to alert immigrant communities of ICE’s presence. [Threads]

• The Reno gunman who fatally shot three people Monday outside the Grand Sierra Resort has died after being shot by police. Authorities say he fired 80 rounds and had no known ties to the victims or casino. [Associated Press]

Video of the Day:

• Mimicking the BART predictions voice like a pro (with a hint of Darth Vader):

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

North Oakland cafe Jerusalem Coffee House was sued by the Trump administration for allegedly kicking out a customer wearing a Star of David hat. Now two months after that lawsuit was served, the owner made his first public remarks.

A full nine months ago, the outrage du jour on both sides of the Bay Area’s Israel-Palestine debate was a video where an Oakland cafe owner asks a customer with a Star of David ballcap to leave the shop. The video, seen below, went viral. The cafe in question is Telegraph Avenue’s Jerusalem Coffee House, and the patron asked to leave was Jonathan Hirsch, whom the SF Standard found had a curiously long history of smartphone-recorded arguments that were often posted online.

Hirsch filed a lawsuit against the coffee shop in March of this year, alleging anti-semitic discrimination. And just weeks before that, another Jewish customer filed his own lawsuit saying that he was denied service for being Jewish in a separate incident. The Trump-run Justice Department then filed a large federal lawsuit against the cafe last month, calling out the coffee shop’s owner Abdulrahim Harara and saying, “It is illegal, intolerable, and reprehensible for any American business open to the public to refuse to serve Jewish customers.”

We had not heard from Harara publicly since that federal lawsuit was filed. But the Chronicle reports that Harara spoke publicly for the first time on the matter at a Wednesday press conference.

“These lawsuits, these campaigns to silence and destroy us, they are desperate attempts to fracture our community, dismantle our faith, erase our voices, and suppress our will to fight,” Harara said Wednesday, according to Oaklandside. “But they will not succeed.”

The lawsuits against Harara and his shop all reference the cafe serving drinks on the anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israelis, drinks that had the names “Iced in Tea Fada” (a play on the word “Intifada”) and “Sweet Sinwar” (an alleged reference to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar). The cafe denies this was the intent.

Harara’s attorney also spoke to the lawsuit from the Trump administration in his Wednesday remarks.“It is a cut-and-paste job of the two bogus private lawsuits,” Glenn Katon said to the crowd, per the Chronicle. “DOJ appears to have done no independent investigation.”

With the three lawsuits, Jerusalem Coffee House is facing significant legal bills. They’ve started a GoFundMe that claims Harara is a target of “smear campaigns and politically-driven lawsuits,” and that the Trump administration lawsuit is “meant to silence his stance against the genocide in Gaza and disrupt the community space that has grown around the cafe.”

Related: Department of Justice Sues Oakland Cafe for Kicking Out Guy Wearing Star of David Hat [SFist]

Image: Jim G via Yelp

California State Senator Scott Wiener and UCSF’s largest donor, the Diller Foundation, are named in new allegations by Dr. Rupa Marya, prominent physician, activist, and musician, who is suing UCSF over her recent termination stemming from public criticism of Israel.

According to the Chronicle, in two lawsuits filed last week, Marya accused the university of colluding with political allies and donor networks to smear her reputation, destroy her career, and silence her advocacy for Palestinian rights.

In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! last week, Marya said her termination at UCSF is tied to a coordinated network that includes Senator Scott Wiener—who has been outspoken against pro-Palestinian speech—and the billionaire Diller family. The Diller’s foundation has made major donations to UCSF, supported Wiener’s political campaigns, and funded Canary Mission, a controversial website known for doxxing pro-Palestinian activists, as reported by The Intercept. She adds that Canary Mission has reportedly been used by the Trump administration to justify student deportations.

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“When UCSF, in coordination with Scott Wiener, started publishing defamatory statements about me across multiple social media sites, I received horrific threats—death threats, rape threats,” Marya told Democracy Now!. “Faculty members told me they were being asked to submit false reports of my clinical behavior, which, in 23 years of practice, I’ve had no incidents of patient safety issues.”

While her termination was made official in May, the tension surrounding Marya’s pro-Palestinian stance traces back to last year. As reported by SFist, UCSF had become a flashpoint for controversy over protest and free speech surrounding Gaza—despite being a medical campus with no undergraduate body. A public conflict erupted after Marya called a colleague’s internal UCSF email—one that questioned a ceasefire and suggested it could embolden Hamas—“an expression of anti-Arab hate.” That colleague, Dr. Avromi Kanal, filed a complaint with the university, which was ultimately dismissed on First Amendment grounds. Kanal said he felt unsafe and unsupported by UCSF leadership, while others, like longtime Palestinian American faculty member Dr. Jess Ghannam, defended the right to protest and criticized the conflation of discomfort with harm.

When we say demonizing “Zionists” easily tips into antisemitism, this is what we mean: This UCSF MD is saying “Zionist doctors” harm patients.

“Zionist” means supporting Israel’s existence as Jewish homeland. ~90% of Jews support this.

Criticize Israel but stop attacking Jews🧵 pic.twitter.com/yEkKnQTgMy

— Senator Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) January 4, 2024

Marya was suspended and subjected to a months-long faculty conduct process before being officially fired on May 20 of this year, which she says was retaliatory. She alleges that UCSF administrators attacked her medical license and suspended her without cause, while ignoring her earlier reports of racist, Islamophobic remarks made by colleagues in internal communications. Those complaints, according to her lawsuit, were quietly closed without serious inquiry.

Before her recent outspoken support for Palestinian rights, Marya had long been a respected figure in the medical community. Named one of Nature’s 20 most influential women in biomedicine, she served on multiple national advisory boards and co-authored the book Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice, a study of how colonialism and structural racism affect health outcomes. Her research often focused on care disparities among Black, Indigenous, and unhoused patients—work she says also drew backlash inside the university.

“UCSF leadership repeatedly characterized Dr. Marya’s advocacy for marginalized patients as ‘unprofessional,’ ‘aggressive,’ and ‘harmful,’” the complaints read. As a woman of Indian descent raised in a Sikh household, Marya says she was targeted with “racist tropes” meant to discredit her both personally and professionally.

Her lawsuits—one filed in federal court for First Amendment violations, the other a state civil rights complaint—seek damages for loss of income and psychological distress. They name UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood and other university officials, and come at a time when the UC system has faced criticism for disciplining faculty and staff who have spoken out against Israel’s military campaign.

Marya says her comments—most notably “stop bombing hospitals”—should never have put her career at risk. “It is our moral and professional obligation to speak out about children being harmed in the ways that they are in Gaza, about hospitals and the whole healthcare structure being destroyed in Gaza,” she told Democracy Now! “and about our healthcare colleagues who have been abducted, tortured and killed in Gaza.”

Her firing has since galvanized a growing coalition. More than 1,000 healthcare workers and students have signed open letters demanding her reinstatement and denouncing UCSF’s crackdown on political expression. Meanwhile, the university has continued to promote speakers with close ties to Israeli lobbying groups, including Elan Carr of the Israeli American Council—despite vocal objections from Jewish, Arab, Muslim, LGBTQ+, and Palestinian members of the campus community.

Marya hopes the lawsuits will spark public awareness and systemic change. “Solidarity is the only thing we have. It’s our superpower to fight authoritarianism, fascism and this kind of racist repression,” she said. “So, I ask for all healthcare workers around the world to stand in solidarity with me, because my fight is our fight, and our fight is for the liberation of Palestine and our collective liberation.”

Image: © pitpony photography / Wikimedia

Previously: Doctors at UCSF Battle Over Opinions of the Gaza War, Question Whether Protest Should Happen at a Hospital

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• The city of Richmond has agreed to pay a $336,000 fine after releasing improperly treated sewage into the bay over a 17-month period, with pollutants including ammonia, coliform bacteria, and copper exceeding permitted limits. Half of the penalty will fund watershed education and trash cleanup at underserved Richmond schools. [East Bay Times]
• The Golden State Valkyries broke a four-game losing streak with a big 95-68 win over the Las Vegas Aces, setting a franchise record for most points in a game. Kayla Thornton led the way with 22 points and 11 rebounds, and three other Valkyries scored in double figures. [NBC Bay Area]
• The Madleen, a humanitarian aid boat carrying Greta Thunberg and other Freedom Flotilla Coalition activists, is within 100 nautical miles of Gaza. The group’s previous vessel, the Conscience, was attacked by Israeli drones last month. [Al Jazeera]

• A salmonella outbreak linked to California-based August Egg Company has sickened at least 79 people across nine states, prompting a recall of 1.7 million dozen organic and cage-free brown eggs sold under multiple brand names with plant codes P-6562 or CA5330. [NPR]
• Nordstrom is returning to SF but in a different capacity—an online order hub in Pacific Heights (on Fillmore near Pine), where customers can pick up orders, try on purchases, and make returns; plus additional services including tailoring and styling. [KGO]
• A nearly five-foot-long Argentine black-and-white tegu lizard—an invasive, egg-eating predator from South America—was spotted by hikers at a Santa Clara County park, prompting officials to urge the public not to approach and to report any sightings immediately. [SFGate]
• If you’re looking to support protestors on the front lines, consider contributing to some community bail and bond funds. [National Bail Fund Network]

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Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

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• Ruth Asawa was the ultimate PTA Mom who spearheaded the city-wide arts program for SFUSD students, which prevails today. [SF Standard]
• Two large protests took place in San Francisco on Saturday — one against cuts to public education, and another marking the 77th anniversary of the Nakba and calling for an end to U.S. support for Israel. [@PSLBayArea]

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• A 36-year-old motorcyclist was killed early Saturday morning in San Jose when a suspected drunk driver veered off U.S. 101 and crashed into him on the shoulder. [Mercury News]

Stay tuned for our next post detailing an off-duty SFPD officer who was arrested for a DUI just after graduating the police academy.

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

• 23-year-old William O’Reilly of Boston is currently being held in the Bay Area while awaiting extradition on federal charges of conspiring to smuggle Irish nationals from Canada into the United States via boat, typically to New York or Boston. An unnamed co-conspirator told authorities that some of the individuals smuggled into the country are suspected of being involved in criminal activity. [Mercury News]
• An electric Jeep Wrangler caught on fire while charging at Google’s campus in Mountain View on Thursday, spreading to three other vehicles — two Teslas and a Honda — and resulting in about $275,000 worth of damages. Authorities said the cause of the fire appeared to be related to the car’s lithium-ion battery charging system.  [Chronicle]

• Five whales have died in the bay in the past month, raising alarms among scientists already concerned about struggling gray whale populations. Experts are investigating the causes and urging stronger protections as sightings spike and vessel strikes remain a growing threat. [Oaklandside]
• San Francisco is suing HUD over new federal grant conditions that officials say force cities to adopt Trump’s anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-choice policies or lose critical homelessness funding. [David Chiu]
• Here’s how to avoid the gridlock traffic downtown and in Mission Bay during Friday night’s pivotal Warriors and Giants games. [Chronicle]

National:

• A Gaza-bound boat from Malta containing 30 humanitarians from over 21 countries, including prominent figures like Greta Thunberg, was reportedly attacked by Israeli drones early Friday morning. The crew has been posting updates as they seek safe and unhindered passage from the Maltese government. [@gazafreedomflotilla]

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• Eighty years after their heroic service, the Six Triple Eight—the only Black, all-female unit to serve overseas in WWII—has been awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. The battalion worked around the clock to clear a massive mail backlog, delivering millions of undelivered letters between soldiers and their families in just three months. [Smithsonian]
• Trump’s latest budget plan slashes funds for permanent supportive housing, threatening to evict chronically homeless people — including veterans — in favor of short-term shelter programs, undermining decades of progress and pushing vulnerable residents back onto the streets. [New York Times]

Video of the Day:

• San Francisco native Margaret Cho wrote a post remembering her friend, musician Jill Sobule, who died in a house fire in Minneapolis on Thursday. Cho shared the video she made for Sobule’s 2009 song, “San Francisco,” which features cameos from various prominent San Francisco folks, including Cho, drag queen Monistat, musician Mark Eitzel, sex columnist Violet Blue, artist Henry Lewis, and writer Stephen Elliott.

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A post shared by Margaret Cho (@margaret_cho)

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

An activist who appeared to be going on a spree of arson and fire-bomb attacks on the UC Berkeley campus last summer in protest of the university's treatment of pro-Palestinian activists now faces prison time for terrorism.

Casey Robert Goonan, 34, has pleaded guilty to federal arson charges in connection with multiple incidents that occurred in June 2024 on the UC Berkeley campus, and one that occurred outside the federal building in Oakland. Goonan, a self-described "scholar activist" who had posted what appeared to be statements of responsibility for the attacks online, was indicted by a federal grand jury in July 2024 after an arrest in late June.

Goonan, who has had an address in Oakland, was staying with his parents in Pleasant Hill at the time of the arrest. According to a release from the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, as part of his plea, Goonan admitted to "placing a bag containing six Molotov cocktails underneath the fuel tank of a marked University of California Police Department (UCPD) patrol car at UC Berkeley in the early morning hours of June 1, 2024, lighting the bag on fire and fleeing."

A campus surveillance camera captured the fire being lit.

He also admitted to bringing three Molotov cocktails to the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building in Oakland on the morning of June 11 with the intent of throwing them inside. Goonan was seen throwing rocks at a window with the intent of breaking it, a plan that was thwarted by a federal security guard, and while fleeing the scene Goonan dropped the Molotov cocktails in a planter and let them on fire.

Goonan further copped to setting several smaller blazes on the UC Berkeley campus on  June 1, June 13, and June 16.

Goonan holds a doctorate from Northwestern University in African American Studies, and wrote an academic paper in 2017 about the Black Panthers' newspaper, writing that the publication "offers a blueprint for U.S.-based radical organizations experimenting with the scientific, premeditated, and necessarily methodical artistry of social revolution."

In anonymous online posts found on IndyBay around the time of the UC Berkeley arsons, Goonan appears to have written messages like "EVERY SINGLE BUILDING ON THE UC BERKELEY CAMPUS DESERVES TO BE INCINERATED FOLLOWING THE UC SYSTEM'S TREATMENT OF STUDENT PROTESTORS," and "LONG LIVE THE STUDENT INTIFADA FOR PALESTINE LIBERATION. STOP THE GENOCIDE NOW. UC SYSTEM MUST DIVEST FROM ISRAEL OR FACE OUR WRATH OF REVENGE."

The fire set on June 16 was followed by the message, "this was done on father's day for all the palestinian fathers who have lost their children at the hands of the zionist and amerikkkan settler states."

Prior to these activities, as the Berkeley Scanner reported last year, Goonan was arrested in San Francisco during a protest outside an anti-trans (TERF) feminist convention that was being held in September 2023 at the Chinatown Hilton in San Francisco.

As part of Goonan's plea, he accepted a terrorism engancement to his charges, admitting that the arsons were "designed to influence and affect the conduct of governments by intimidation and coercion and to retaliate against the governments of the United States and the State of California for their conduct."

He pleaded guilty to one count of maliciously damaging or destroying property used in or affecting interstate commerce by means of fire or an explosive, and faces a minimum sentence of five years in prison.

"In America, we are all free to express our political views and petition the government. But we are not free to do so using violence,” said U.S. Attorney Ismail J. Ramsey in a statement. “Politically motivated violence undermines our democracy, and we will continue to investigate and prosecute those who engage in it.”

Goonan will face sentencing on April 8, 2025.

Previously: 'Scholar-Activist' Indicted By Grand Jury for Arsons at UC Berkeley; Arson Attempt at Oakland Federal Building Comes to Light

Photo: Leo Escala

A big courtroom win for the protesters known as “the GG26” who blocked the Golden Gate Bridge with a Gaza ceasefire protest on April 15, as an SF judge has thrown out 32 of the 44 charges that DA Brooke Jenkins had brought against them.

Now more than seven months after the April 15 protests blocked the Golden Gate Bridge to urge a ceasefire in the Gaza conflict, the protesters are still in the news as their case winds its way through the courts.

Back in August, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins charged 26 people with a slew of felonies including false imprisonment, saying that “hundreds of motorists were trapped on the Golden Gate Bridge and US 101, who had no choice but to remain imprisoned on the freeway for several hours.” But the felony counts brought backlash after previous bridge protesters had not faced such serious charges.

In a Friday ruling, SF Superior Court Judge Judge Brendan P. Conroy seemed to agree. KTVU reports that Judge Conroy dismissed 32 of the 44 charges against the 26 protesters, tossing out nearly 75% of all charges. According to a release from defense attorneys, “The judge also expressed an openness to reducing the charges for eight individuals from felonies to misdemeanors, and reducing restitution to a reasonable amount when the case proceeds in December.”

“Today’s decision is a huge win for our clients and the community at large,” defense attorney Jeff Wozniak said in that release. “DA Jenkins overcharged this case and that was why Judge Conroy dismissed 75 percent of the charges. The clients know their actions were just, taken to speak up for the thousands of Palestinians murdered in the past year and that the initial, overly-harsh charges were merely an effort to silence their activism.”

Though the Chronicle points out that many of the felony charges remain in place. One of the defendants facing felony charges had their case dismissed outright, leaving seven of the 26 defendants still facing felony charges of false imprisonment and conspiracy.

An arraignment for those remaining charges is scheduled for Friday, December 6 at SF Superior Court.

Related: Protests Block Golden Gate Bridge, All Northbound Lanes of 880 In Oakland [SFist]

Image: @JerseyNoahx via Twitter

The day before the one-year anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and the now-year-long response of sustained Israeli counterattacks, a Sunday Mission District protest drew 1,500 people but left the event space Manny’s coated with malicious graffiti.

Today is the one-year anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,200 Isrealis and took another 250 hostage. In the year since, the prolonged Israeli response has killed an estimated 42,000 Palesitinians. While we do not see any further Bay Area Gaza protests listed for today on the Arab Resource and Organizing Center event page where such things are typically listed (and there are events listed every day for the rest of this week), it seems likely there will be some form of action today.

And there was on Sunday, as KTVU reports that around 1,500 pro-Palestine protesters took to the Mission District Sunday afternoon. (This video of the march suggests it was larger.) While it was largely peaceful, the SF Standard notes that the event space Manny’s was thoroughly tagged with graffiti by the protesters. This is not the first time we’ve seen anti-Semitic graffiti on the Manny’s storefront.  

The above video shows one tagger explaining (from behind a mask) that “Manny supports Kamala. Manny supports bombing Palestine.” Other photos from the SF Standard show the graffiti also said “Manny is a rich murderer” and “Zionists out of Frisco.”

“I’m deeply troubled and saddened to have our community attacked like this,” Manny’s owner Manny Yekutiel told the SF Standard. “Vandalizing a Jewish-owned business on the eve of the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust is disgusting and has no place in the city of Saint Francis.”

But per KTVU, the protest otherwise went without notable incident. It started at 1 pm at Valencia and 16th streets — where Manny’s is located — and continued around the Mission on Sunday afternoon.

"We’re mourning for all who have lost their lives,” Jewish Voice for Peace member Alice Robinson told KTVU. “And we’re also here to fight for those who are still living who could still be saved.”

KTVU has video from Sunday’s protests, though the segment starts with a Palo Alto gathering honoring those that are still being held hostage, before chronicling the much larger Sunday Mission District protests.

Meanwhile, the Jewish News of Northern California notes that there are several commemorations to mourn the October 7 victims on Monday throughout the Bay Area, including one in SF on Ocean Beach.

Related: Berkeley Protesters Have Broken Into and Occupied Empty Building In Renewed Pro-Palestine Protest [SFist]

Image: @domestic415 via Twitter

Some of the 26 individuals who are facing criminal charges stemming from a Tax Day protest in April that shut down the Golden Gate Bridge for several hours made court appearances on Monday, and were joined by activists protesting their prosecution.

D0zens of protesters gathered in the hallway outside the courtroom Monday at SF's Hall of Justice chanting "Drop the charges!" as a group of the April 15 protest participants faced a preliminary hearing. NBC Bay Area has footage from outside the courtroom, and they report that members of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) were part of the protest.

An NBC reporter described the demonstration Monday as "quick" but "rowdy."

A public defender representing one of the charged protesters told the station that all of the protesters' actions were "protected speech."

Wassim Hage with AROC tells NBC, "The charges are exemplary and ridiculous... It’s clear that there is an attempt here to discourage or intimidate people from trying acts of public civil disobedience. I don't think it's going to be effective."

District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced the charges against the 26 protesters in early August, saying that the April 15 protest put lives and safety at risk.

"The demonstration on the Golden Gate Bridge caused a level of safety risk, including extreme threats to the health and welfare of those trapped, that we as a society cannot ignore or allow," Jenkins said in a statement. She included several examples of those who were stuck in hours of traffic which included a surgeon who had cancel all their operations that day, and an infant who missed a pre-surgery appointment.

In total, 38 charges were filed against the 26 protesters, including conspiracy and false imprisonment — and eight individuals are facing felony charges.

The handling of this protest, so far, stands in contrast to how the DA's office handled a similar protest last November that shut down the westbound Bay Bridge for several hours. In that case, 78 people were arrested and charged with misdemeanors, and they all accepted plea deals for pre-trial diversion in March.

Jenkins appears to want to make an example of the Golden Gate Bridge protesters and seek harsher penalties.

The group used a tactic known as "sleeping dragon," concealing handcuffed hands under PVC pipe to make it more difficult for police to break up their human chain. A group of them — likely the ones facing the felony charges — linked arms out car windows in order to blockade the entire bridge. Each of the PVC pipes had the words "Stop the Genocide" painted on them.

The day of the protest, Tax Day in the US, there were dozens of other organized demonstrations around the country to protest US aid to Israel in the war in Gaza. A similar "sleeping dragon" protest that same morning shut down I-880 in Oakland, only those protesters used steel drums filled with concrete to further obscure their linked arms.

Previously: SF DA Charges 26 Over April Golden Gate Bridge Protest

Photo: JerseyNoahx/X