Peaceful march against police killings ends at City Hall — with sheriff’s deputies blocking the way and the sheriff addressing the crowd

By Rebecca Bowe

Photos by Justin Benttinen

DECEMBER 15, 2014 — Youth organizers led a march and rally in San Francisco Saturday to coincide with the Millions March protests, which drew tens of thousands into the streets nationwide to protest racial injustice and police killings targeting black and Latino youth.

Gathering across from the Ferry Building around 2 p.m., the event kicked off with an emotional moment as a large crowd participated in a die-in to remember the lives of Mike Brown and Eric Garner, unarmed black men who died at the hands of police.

As activists lay on the ground, some shouted, “I can’t breathe!” invoking Garner’s last words and a phrase that has become a rallying cry for the movement.

The march wound up at City Hall — where, in an interesting twist, sheriff’s deputies blocked the protesters and Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi addressed them.

The dense crowd made its way down Market Street, chanting, “Hands up, don’t shoot!” and “Eric Garner, Mike Brown, shut the whole system down!” Protesters were flanked by lines of police who kept pace with the crowd on foot, while police motorcycles stayed near the front of the march.

Organizers emphasized from the start that they intended for the event to remain peaceful, and volunteer “safety monitors” joined hands at certain junctures to ensure the march stayed together along the predetermined route. When protesters approached the cable-car turnaround at the intersection with Powell Street, they staged another die-in while someone played a recording of Garner’s last words.

Occasionally, bystanders would spontaneously join in. A woman donning a Santa cap who said she’d spent the afternoon at holiday gatherings stepped off the sidewalk and into the march, explaining, “this is way more important.”

But when they reached City Hall, where organizers had planned for speakers to address the crowd on the front steps, they encountered sheriff’s deputies in riot gear stationed along the front of the building.

For a few minutes, things got confusing as some protesters started to denounce the fact that officers were preventing a peaceful crowd from gathering on the front steps of a public building.

But as tempers began to flare, Thea Matthews, an organizer with the Black Student Union of City College of San Francisco, grabbed a microphone and did something surprising – she called on San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi to come to address the march. That led Mirkarimi to launch into a story about how, on a plane coming back from D.C. several days earlier, he’d serendipitously encountered Wanda Johnson, whose son, Oscar Grant III, was gunned down by a BART police officer in 2009.

But protesters seemed more interested in why they couldn’t hold the rally on the steps as planned. We caught the moment on video, here:

After the rally had gotten underway, Refugio Nieto, whose son Alex Nieto was killed by San Francisco police officers in March, offered a few comments to the crowd. With family friend and advocate Benjamin Bac Sierra translating, Nieto’s father offered thanks to “all of you for coming and supporting this beautiful, unfortunate, cause … He also says that all he wants is truth and justice. That is it.”

Bac Sierra shared a few comments of his own about the questions that continue to surround Nieto’s death, which has sparked months of protests. Unlike the high-profile cases of Garner and Brown, the names of the officers who fired at Nieto still have not been publicly released, although a federal magistrate recently ordered the city to disclose them as part of a civil suit filed on behalf of Nieto’s family.