Charges Against Golden Gate Protesters Largely Dismissed

26 protesters drew international attention to their cause when they halted traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge last April. People lobbied praise and contempt for their highly visible stand against the Israeli invasion of Palestine. Contentious District Attorney Brooke Jenkins pursued extreme charges against many demonstrators, including felonies for conspiracy and false imprisonment. All I could think about when news of their arrests went public was how much carnage was happening on the other side of the world.

In Gaza, “34,535 Palestinians [had died] and 77,704 [were] injured between 7 October 2023 and 30 April 2024, according to the Ministry of Health of the State of Palestine, with a further 10,000 missing, presumed buried under rubble.” (source)

A significant win for our vulnerable right to protest

Now, seven months later, a judge has thrown out most of the charges, dismissing them outright for one defendant. The dismissals represent a significant win for our vulnerable right to protest. The first reasons people cite for hesitating to enact civil disobedience, no matter badly needed, are arrest and imprisonment. Fines and litigators are difficult to pay off, convictions prohibit the pursuit of many professions, and jailtime can be traumatic. If any false imprisonment happened here, it happened to protestors made criminals by exercising their First Amendment right. 

When protests work

Who remembers Occupy, when OPD critically wounded Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen, and the march that shut down the Port of Oakland? Occupy didn’t get banks to empty their coffers and hand out the cash, but it accomplished something momentous nonetheless. The first mass protest organized mostly through social media showed police departments nationwide that the public was not entirely sedated. The Israel-Palestine conflict however was taboo to bring up even then.

America’s cops have only ramped up their militarization. They proved it after Trump got elected (the first time around) and again when Black Lives Matter gained traction. The BLM movement exposed police complicity in maintaining racist power structures, and cops responded en force. An impasse exists between Americans fearful of criminal punishment and an effective protest against the crimes of our government. Cops nowadays are still as severe as they were in the 1960s, just with different riot gear. Radical change has been occurring mostly in the wrong settings.

Knowing this, the Golden Gate Bridge protesters—the “GG26” apparently—still took on the risk of damning felony charges. The judge’s decision to overturn those exact charges could signal a change in the rising tide against public demonstrations. The hypocrisy of DA Jenkins’ claim that April’s protest jeopardized “public safety” stands out in the context of ongoing genocide. A rare incidence of justice occurred when the judge acknowledged the DA’s overextended hand.

An attorney called his clients’ actions part of a “long legacy of people of conscience who have used civil disobedience to bend the arc of history toward justice.” (SF Chronicle)

The true cost of committing civil disobedience

The judge reduced or dismissed charges for fifteen protesters. Seven however will face trial for costs incurred from April’s protest on the Golden Gate Bridge. Drivers ignorant of the cause for the shutdown are suing over missed pay and medical appointments. On top of that, the Golden Gate Bridge Authority might pursue restitution for $160,000 in lost revenue. The demonstration lasted approximately four hours.

Lead attorney for the GG26 Jeff Wozniak celebrated the majority win for his clients.

“For three-quarters of the charges, there was not enough evidence — even at this stage of a preliminary hearing, where the standard of evidence is very low — for the judge to hold those clients to those charges,” Wozniak told KQED. “This case was overcharged, and it’s been a humongous waste of resources. They have likely spent more than the bridge authority is asking for just to prosecute this case.”

Meanwhile, recent estimates (as of Novmeber 2024) conservatively place the death toll of the ongoing genocide at over 44,000.