Vanguard News Desk Editor
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Anti-war and human rights demonstrators who used vehicles to chain themselves together to block traffic lanes at the Golden Gate Bridge for more than five hours last April 15 are being overcharged by SF District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who defense lawyers claim is “weaponizing the law.”
According to a statement released by the National Lawyers Guild in San Francisco—its lawyers and the SF Public Defenders Office are representing the accused protestors— “Demonstrators protesting the genocidal war in Gaza shut down the Golden Gate Bridge,” and Israel’s “killing over 42,000 people, destroying the infrastructure of entire cities and intentionally starving the citizens of Gaza.”
“Demonstrators on the bridge held up signs, ‘STOP THE WORLD FOR GAZA!’” wrote Oakland attorney Anne Weills.
Weills reports Jenkins’ San Francisco’s District Attorney’s office “charged the Golden Gate 26 with felonies and misdemeanors, including conspiracy to commit trespassing to interfere with a business, obstruction of a thoroughfare, unlawful assembly, refusal to disperse at a riot and failure to obey the orders of police and 38 counts of false imprisonment.”
The Oakland attorney added, “DA Jenkins aggressively took to all forms of social media to pursue even harsher punishment for the protesters, by soliciting those who may have been inconvenienced by the protest on the bridge, telling them that they may be entitled to significant compensation if they chose to complain to her office or to the CHP.”
Attorneys for the NLG and the San Francisco Public Defender’s office charge that DA Jenkins’ decision to overcharge protesters with felonies was “weaponizing the law.”
NLG lawyer EmilyRose Johns said, according to Weills, “Brooke Jenkins’ overcharging in this case exposes an effort to intimidate protesters and silence dissent. That she brought these charges after meeting with and receiving gifts from the Israeli consulate – and during an election year where criticism of genocide is being blatantly and dishonestly conflated with antisemitism – is a transparent attempt to maintain power at the expense of young lives and livelihoods.
“Silence in the face of the atrocities in Gaza should shake our collective conscience. Speaking out and demanding that taxpayers care about the atrocities should be revered, not punished.”
Weills wrote, lawyers “leading” the defense include SF Deputy Public Defender Elizabeth Camacho and others from her office, and NLG lawyers Stuart Hanlon, EmilyRose Johns, Jeff Wozniak, Walter Riley, Dan Siegel, John Viola, Shaffy Moeel, Rachel Lederman and others.
Siegel, according to Weills, said, “I haven’t seen a protest so overcharged since the conspiracy charges from Stop the Draft Week of 1967. Fortunately, we have a great group of veteran and young NLG lawyers along with the SF Public Defender’s Office, committed to fighting DA Jenkins to win dismissal of all these cases.”
Weills added, “I joined the Bay Area NLG my first year of law school in 1985. Growing up politically in the Bay Area, I have participated in scores of demonstrations protesting many wars—particularly our US imperial wars, all the endless attacks on human rights everywhere, the Black Lives Matter struggle, and most recently for the liberation of Palestine and the end of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians. And now for Lebanon.”
Walter Riley, a longtime NLG lawyer, said, according to Weills, “I am honored to represent folks in these cases. Their call for a ceasefire of the genocide of Palestinians is righteous, bringing focus to the United States and its complicity in the murder and destruction of their people and their land. It is a moral imperative for all of us as lawyers to stand shoulder to shoulder in defending their actions to resist genocide.”
