Heading north on Mission Street.

Some 200 protesters marched in the Mission District Tuesday night to protest the Grand Jury’s decision in Ferguson, Missouri against indicting Officer Darren Wilson for his involvement in shooting and killing 18-year-old Michael Brown.

With chants calling for “justice” and proclaiming the officer “guilty” a cross section of San Francisco – old, young and middle aged – marched peacefully from the northeast 24th Street BART Plaza to 16th Street and then swung south on Valencia Street. The marchers stopped for about 20 minutes in front of the Mission District Police Station where tonight’s monthly community meeting had been cancelled in anticipation of the march.

Desmond Richardson from the Answer Coalition, spoke to the crowd in front of the station, promising a daily march to hold police accountable. The problem wasn’t any one officer, he said, but that the station represented a “racist system.”

A dozen police lined up in front of the brick building on Valencia listening to Richmond and others speak, but the evening never became tense.

On the way to the station, two young women questioned police about the shooting of 28-year-old Alex Nieto on March 21st on Bernal Hill. The case is in dispute with officers saying they mistook Nieto’s Taser for a gun.

“Did you kill Alex Nieto,” one of the girls asked an officer walking on the sidewalk alongside the march. When he ignored her, she held out the flyer with Nieto’s face and asked the next officer, “Did you kill Alex Nieto,” and then the next “Did you kill Alex Nieto.”

They all walked by her in silence.

After the stop at the police station, the marchers continued back to the 24th Street BART plaza and disbanded about 7:30 p.m.

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Founder/Executive Editor. I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019 when I retired. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still there.

As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.

Right now I'm trying to figure out how you make that long-held interest in local news sustainable. The answer continues to elude me.

I grew up in the Mission, went to School of the Arts high school for creative writing. Bounced around colleges from SFState, to CCSF, to CCA where I graduated with a degree in photography.

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7 Comments

  1. Protesters in the Mission, what a shock! I have a universal sign for all protesters, “I’m Helpless, and Hopeless.”

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  2. How many people protesting actually read the Grand Jury transcripts? Just curious…

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  3. Anyone know if they got justice by their protest? Either way I bet posting these photos impressed their Facebook friends.

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  4. How is there no coverage of this in any media? I’ve got heliciopters flying over us, police sirens blaring and there’s a march taking over Valencia from 16th to 24th and yet there is nothing on SF Chron, this website, SFIST, SF Examiner, etc. Only twitter seems to have news. It would be nice to know if I should stay in or if I can leave the house.

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    1. A couple of hundred people marching in the Mission isn’t news. There’s always a protest about something.

      The Giants celebrations were a lot more hazardous then this protest, which will fizzle out in another day or two, as they always do.

      Non issue.

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    2. This IS coverage. I believe that the last sentence says that the protestors “disbanded about 7:30 p.m.” So there’s your answer if you can leave the house or not.

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