In a protest that had little or nothing to do with Donald Trump, dozens of pro-union protesters managed to shout down and shut down Tuesday's SF Board of Supervisors meeting, in a demonstration against Mayor Lurie’ proposed budget cuts and layoffs.  

It is a very normal thing at any given weekly SF Board of Supervisors meeting that some group, often with coordinated matching signs and t-shirts, holds some sort of rally on the steps of SF City Hall before the meeting, generally because of a cause that they are upset about or a vote about to be taken by the board. But it is not normal what happened today, as unions affiliated with city public sector workers marched straight from their demonstration on the steps right up to the Board of Supervisors meeting upstairs at City Hall and shouted down the weekly meeting with chants and protests.

The protesters halted the meeting for a little over an hour, and there ended up being arrests. They were ostensibly demonstrating against Mayor Lurie’s proposed budget cuts that entail eliminating about 1,400 City Hall positions — the majority of them currently unfilled — as the city faces a roughly $800 million budget deficit.

The rabble-rousing started at about 2:15 pm Tuesday, just minutes into the meeting. Demonstrators stood and shouted “Protect public services!” as supervisors nervously chatted amongst themselves, or just tuned it out and snuck in a little work on their laptop. Meanwhile, sheriff's deputies looked on stone-faced, not seeming sure what to do.

SFGovTV continued broadcasting the meeting, though whether or not this was intentional, the sound was cut off on the broadcast. So viewers could not hear the chants, which appeared to be led by the woman with her arm in the air at the front of the crowd.

By about 2:35 pm, the board called a recess on the meeting, saying it would resume at 3 pm once the protesters’ chants had died down.

They did not die down! A minute or two after 3 pm, Board President Rafael Mandelman tried to restart the meeting, but the protesters were all still there and all still shouting. “Okay, we are back, and we are reconvening, and we are going to recess until 3:30,” a frustrated Mandelman announced.

He tried this again at 3:30, but all of the protesters were still there, all of them still shouting and chanting.