Dozens Arrested after Protests at Civic Center BART and on Market St. Disrupt Commuters

For the second week straight, hundreds of protesters held demonstrations at several downtown BART stations and on the streets, forcing authorities to close down the stations and frustrating commuters during rush hour.

Monday’s protests, organized by a group calling itself Anonymous, forced authorities to close and then reopen the Civic Center and Powell Street stations several times between 5 and 9 p.m., as protesters marched back and forth on Market Street. Police reported 38 arrests on Market Street. Earlier arrests of about five protesters were made at Civic Center, according to witnesses. The vast majority of arrests on Monday were made at around 9 p.m., when 32 protesters were arrested in front of the main library at Civic Center.

Mission Loc@l captured raw video throughout the evening that can be seen here.

This was the third Monday night BART protest; the first was on July 11 and the second on August 15. This week’s protest had grown by about 50 people compared to last week’s; it also lasted longer and the participants were angrier at times, getting into confrontations with commuters and police.

The first protest, in July, was in response to the fatal shooting of Charles Blair Hill, 45, at the Civic Center platform. The most recent protests are in response to BART’s decision to block wireless signals at a BART platform to prevent protesters from organizing — an action that has drawn comparisons to the actions that autocratic regimes in the Middle East have taken to quash protests.

Some of the organizers are already using Twitter to try to organize another protest.