Seven pro-Palestine protesters are on trial in San Francisco this week, accused of bringing one of many nation’s most iconic bridges to a grinding halt, and if convicted, they may spend as much as 15 years in jail.
The case facilities on an April 15, 2024 demonstration through which all southbound visitors on the Golden Gate Bridge was dropped at a standstill for greater than 4 hours, triggering main disruption throughout San Francisco’s most important entry level.
Contained in the courtroom Wednesday, prosecutors advised jurors the incident was not a peaceable inconvenience however a deliberate obstruction of a significant public roadway.
“This case is easy,” Assistant District Legal professional Angela Roze advised the jury, backing her argument with video proof from the scene that confirmed officers on the bridge interacting with Sarah Cantor, who recognized herself because the “police liaison” in the course of the protest.
The footage additionally captured protesters blocking the roadway in autos as officers coordinated across the scene.
Roze stated the actions had been unmistakable.
“The proof that you just see is strictly what the defendants did,” she continued. “There isn’t any query that they obstructed a thoroughfare.”
She additionally drew a agency boundary between political perception and felony conduct.
“Whilst you might agree with their trigger, and it could be an essential one, it doesn’t excuse breaking the regulation.”
The protection is anticipated to argue the alternative, that the blockade was pushed by ethical urgency over the struggle in Gaza and carried out solely after different types of protest failed.
Public defender Nuha Abusamra advised jurors, “There was no authorized different at this level.”
She added, “It was time for civil disobedience.”
Abusamra additionally stated her shopper River Allen and others had been prepared to “transfer to make a lane,” referring to the bridge’s movable median barrier, in an try to permit emergency entry via the shutdown.
One other protection lawyer, Katy Isa, stated her shopper Conrad DeJesus “had no different alternative however to get entangled,” pointing to what she described as fixed publicity to battle imagery “coming via his feed day-after-day, morning, midday and evening.”
The authorized battle follows a turbulent aftermath from the identical protest.
In August 2024, greater than two dozen different activists arrested in the course of the bridge shutdown had been launched after San Francisco District Legal professional Brooke Jenkins stated there was not sufficient proof to prosecute them.
On the time, Jenkins urged affected motorists to return ahead so that they might be documented within the case, saying they may “be alleged as a sufferer” to assist construct prosecutions.
“Anybody who was falsely imprisoned on the Golden Gate Bridge on April 15, 2024, is urged to contact the California Freeway Patrol,” she stated.
The monetary influence of the blockade additionally resurfaced in 2025, when the Golden Gate Bridge Freeway and Transportation District initially sought $163,000 in restitution for misplaced toll income, earlier than finally dropping the demand.
The April 2024 disruption was a part of a broader wave of coordinated demonstrations throughout the nation, the place activists blocked main infrastructure in Illinois, California, New York and the Pacific Northwest.
The actions disrupted airports, highways, and key crossings together with the Golden Gate and Brooklyn bridges.
Within the Bay Space, the shutdown halted all automobile, pedestrian, and bike visitors throughout the span for hours, whereas further protesters chained themselves to 55-gallon drums stuffed with cement on Interstate 880 in Oakland.
In Oregon, demonstrators blocked Interstate 5 close to Eugene, stopping visitors for about 45 minutes.
