It was a relatively quiet first day in San Francisco Superior Court today for seven pro-Palestinian activists, despite what they are facing: All seven have been charged with a felony conspiracy and a litany of misdemeanors, including “false imprisonment,” by District Attorney Brooke Jenkins over an April 2024 pro-Palestine protest on the Golden Gate Bridge that could see them put away for up to 14 years.
The severity of the charges has been a dominant theme for the defendants since charges were filed against them in August 2024.
“Now, more than ever, we need to fight to protect our right to protest and our right to dissent,” said River Allen, one of the defendants, on the courthouse steps before their first day in court.
Allen and 25 others were arrested on April 15, 2024 for blocking the Golden Gate Bridge for over four hours. Jenkins later charged 18 of those protesters with misdemeanors, and the remaining eight received felonies. The misdemeanor charges were dropped, alongside one of the felony charges.
“District Attorney Jenkins is the first district attorney to use false imprisonment against protest,” Allen said. “It’s not lost on me that we are being charged with false imprisonment, and meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza are fighting for their life in a literal open air prison.”
Protesters have blocked the Golden Gate Bridge going back decades — AIDS activists famously did so in 1989, chaining their arms together — but the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway Transportation District and Jenkins came down hard on the April 2024 demonstrators. The bridge initially sought $163,000 in restitution from the group before dropping their demands last year.
The criminal trial is the last measure left. Much of Friday morning’s proceedings were administrative: The judge coordinated with attorneys over scheduling, and set a date for selecting a jury.
Finding members who can sit in an impartial jury, Judge Teresa Caffese said, will likely depend “on peoples’ personal beliefs surrounding the reason we’re all here.”
Which is to say: how they feel about Israel, Palestine and America’s involvement in the Middle East.
But some minutes later, Caffese took a moment to address “the elephant in the room” and sought to set politics aside:
“I’m the judge,” she said. “Not a sitting member of Congress.”
“This is a criminal case. The defendants deserve a fair trial.”
The group appeared for the first time in court for this trial Friday, four of them in person, three remotely by web conference. Some half dozen friends and family members appeared in support of the seven codefendants.
Each of the seven has their own attorney, but the group will be tried together by the district attorney’s office. Allen is represented by Public Defender Nuha Abusamra.
“The public defender’s office and the defense team in general are ready to fight this case zealously,” Abusamra said. “In the defense’s opinion, this is an overcharged case for protesting against genocide in Palestine.”
The protesters have argued that the charges are unprecedented.
The district attorney’s office declined a request for comment. In a press release announcing the original charges, which were filed in August 2024, Jenkins said: “While we must protect avenues for free speech, the exercise of free speech can not compromise public safety.”
“As a result of the protest, hundreds of motorists were trapped on the Golden Gate Bridge and US 101, who had no choice but to remain imprisoned on the freeway for several hours,” the DA’s press release continued.
The trial is expected to last three months, which would place the end of the trial some two years after the original charges were filed. Since then, the codefendants have weathered the proceedings together. Some have lost work following their arrests, Allen said.
“It has taken a toll on my life and on my codefendants’ lives,” Allen said. “But I will say, the intent from the district attorney’s office was to create a chilling effect, to divide movement, to make people feel demoralized and isolated. And it has had the opposite effect.”
“I feel very close to my co-defendants,” Allen added. “We’ve become a great part of each other’s lives. We go camping, we take each other to doctor’s appointments.”
