Demonstrations in solidarity over the death of George Floyd continued for a third weekend around the Bay Area, although they were much less volatile than displays last month that were marked by violence and vandalism.
An estimated 250 people took part in a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest Saturday afternoon in Martinez, starting at the city’s Waterfront Park and ending in front of the main courthouse building downtown.
The protest, during which participants spent eight minutes and 46 seconds kneeling to symbolize the time a Minneapolis police officer knelt on the neck of George Floyd, who died soon after, was one of a number of similar events across the Bay Area on Saturday. There were no reports of any of the protests turning violent or destructive.
In addition to actions in San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland, a number of smaller Bay Area cities — Benicia, Burlingame, Morgan Hill, Millbrae, San Carlos, Brentwood, Fairfax, Larkspur, Hayward, Vacaville — hosted peaceful marches and gatherings over the weekend, almost three weeks after Floyd’s death.
A larger, but still basically peaceful, protest took place in Vallejo, where several hundred people marched about a mile from City Hall to the city’s police headquarters to protest the June 2 shooting death by police of Sean Monterrosa, a 22-year-old San Francisco man who Vallejo police believed had a handgun in his pocket. It turned out Monterrosa was carrying a hammer.
The “Say Their Names” protest in Berkeley included more than 1,000 marchers Saturday afternoon who went from the Rockridge BART station to Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley.