Golden Gate Bridge Protest Trial Opens in San Francisco

Attorney Shaffy Moeel said her client, Bhavika Anandpura, felt it was “immediate, urgent [and] necessary” to join the protesters, who chained themselves to parked vehicles and each other across the southbound lanes of the bridge, shutting down traffic in both directions for about four hours in the early morning of April 15, 2024.

“She posted on social media, she called Congress, she wrote letters, she joined protests … but nothing changes. The bombings continued, hunger spread,” Moeel said during her opening statement. “By April, this does not feel theoretical anymore.

“She thought an economic boycott could create real economic consequences that people in power can’t ignore,” Moeel told the courtroom packed with supporters donning keffiyehs. Some of the attendees have also participated in protests calling on local colleges to divest from Israeli companies and weapons manufacturers and on the Port of Oakland to end military cargo shipping through the city’s airport.

The seven are part of a larger group that participated in a multi-city effort to disrupt local and global economies and put pressure on the U.S. government to halt support for Israel’s war in Gaza on Tax Day 2024. Demonstrators also shut down traffic on Interstate-880 in Oakland, and staged similar protests in San Diego, Seattle, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Chicago and Tallahassee, Florida. Demonstrations were also held internationally, across Mexico, Vietnam and Australia, among others.

Months later, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins charged 26 Bay Area protesters, self-identified as the “Golden Gate 26,” in connection with the action.

Cases against 18 of the defendants, who faced misdemeanor charges, have been dropped since, and an eighth person who initially faced felony charges had their case thrown out by a judge in 2024 due to lack of evidence.

In the past, San Francisco has seen Golden Gate Bridge protests related to environmental justice and the handling of the AIDS crisis. More recently, dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters who shut down westbound travel on the Bay Bridge in November 2023 were charged with misdemeanors and reached a deal with the San Francisco DA’s office to avoid jail time.

Compared to those, the charges against the remaining Golden Gate Bridge 26 defendants represent some of the harshest. Each is charged with felony conspiracy, along with a slew of misdemeanors, including unlawful assembly, willful restriction of free movement and multiple counts of false imprisonment.

Attorneys for the defendants asked a judge last year to downgrade the felonies to misdemeanors, arguing their clients had been overcharged and targeted for their political beliefs. But the judge declined, saying his decision was influenced in part by a significant restitution claim from the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District.

The bridge operators initially sought more than $160,000 from the protesters for lost toll revenue, though they reached a deal last year that allowed 16 defendants, not including those facing felony charges, to pay a collective $5,300 in exchange for dropping the claim.

The protesters’ attorneys are not disputing that their clients blocked bridge travel, but plan to make the case that they felt their actions were necessary to stop a genocide in Gaza.

To prove a necessity defense, they’ll need to show that the protesters believed they were facing a real, specific and immediate threat to themselves or others; had no reasonable alternative to the action they took; did not create greater danger than the danger they avoided; and did not contribute to or cause the threat.

During opening statements, attorneys laid out each protester’s individual circumstances leading up to the action — from one who traveled to Palestine herself, to another who heard a trauma surgeon’s account of treating patients in Gaza, and multiple who said their clients had attended protests, sit-ins and called their representatives without response.

Attorney Nuha Abusamra said her client “believed this was the only way to get U.S. officials to stop sending arms to Israel.”

But Assistant District Attorney Angela Roze cited significant inconveniences the action caused for those trying to travel across the Golden Gate Bridge that morning.

“People missed doctors’ appointments, nurses were missing from their jobs, children were forced to defecate in bags, people had little to no water,” Roze said. “Because these seven individuals decided that their cause, their message, was more important.”

Roze said it is against the law to block traffic, restrict others’ movement and make a plan to do so.

“The evidence is clear: these individuals broke the law,” Roze told the jury. “And while you may agree with their message, their cause, and it may be an important one, it does not justify breaking the law.”