As President Trump threatened to mobilize the military in states that fail to control “lawlessness,” Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday voiced common cause with the activists who have taken to the streets to denounce police brutality across the country, saying “your rage is real. Express it so that we can hear it.”
“The black community is not responsible for what is happening right now. We are — our institutions are — accountable to this moment,” Newsom said at a news conference streamed from Genesis Church in south Sacramento.
But the governor delivered a different message to what he called a small group of opportunists who have turned peaceful protests toward violence and looting in the wake of the killing of George Floyd — a black man who died last week after Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin was filmed kneeling on Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes.
“To those that want to exploit this moment and that want to fan violence and fear — we hear you as well, but we don’t have the same sensitivities as it relates to those that are trying to exercise their voice from a place of hurt and pain,” he said.
The governor’s comments came as thousands of demonstrators across the Bay Area prepared for another day of protests. By Monday evening, some were beginning to take their marches to the region’s largest highways — blocking lanes on Interstate 680 in Walnut Creek and Highway 101 in Palo Alto.
Trump threatened Monday to send “thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers” to end the civil unrest in areas where, the president said, local officials have “failed to take necessary action.” Earlier, he told governors on a conference call they would look “weak” if they did not quash protests.
Newsom, who has steered clear of directly criticizing Trump since the COVID-19 pandemic first began, sidestepped the opportunity again on Monday, saying that he cares more about his residents than “some of the noise I heard during a morning phone call.”
“I have a choice. I could be part of the daily back-and-forth in the news cycle and continue to perpetuate the problems that persist in this country, or I can choose to focus a message that I think is so much more powerful,” Newsom said.
The governor, however, did say that he was making additional resources available to local officials in order to meet the needs of each community. In Sacramento, that meant the arrival of about 500 National Guard troops on Monday, according to a city news release, which said the city and police department made the request for additional assistance Sunday. No Bay Area city has yet asked for the National Guard.
By Monday, about a dozen Bay Area cities had established overnight curfews aimed at curtailing violence, looting and widespread property damage that has taken place in recent days and led to the arrests of hundreds of individuals across the region. Alameda County, which has experienced the worst of the region’s damage, instituted the Bay Area’s first — and only — countywide curfew starting Monday.
Newsom said Monday that he was “monitoring violent extremist organizing” that might be stoking the looting but did not go into detail about what groups he was alluding to.
“They’re well defined all throughout this country, they’re names you’ve heard of, names I don’t even particularly want to reinforce or promote, which is their intent,” he said, adding that some are coming from outside of the community to cause violence and destruction.
Bay Area law enforcement officials, however, said they have yet to determine whether outside instigators have contributed to the violence in the region over the past several nights.
“There’s been a lot of people saying there’s been outside entities coming in, and if that’s true, that information may be helpful in identifying specific radical groups,” said Sgt. Ray Kelly of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office. “We haven’t had a chance to crunch that yet.”
San Jose Police Chief Eddie Garcia said most of the individuals that his department has arrested in recent days have been from the area.
Under San Jose’s first curfew on Sunday night, the city saw its largest yet most peaceful protest of the weekend. Still, 55 people were arrested, including for graffiti, broken windows, looting and staying out past curfew.
Imani Williams, 22, of San Jose, a student at San Jose City College who was at City Hall Plaza for the protest Monday afternoon, said she felt that the curfew and crackdowns by police in recent days “just make it seem like they don’t care about us.”
“I want to see more police stand up. I want them to take a knee, show respect,” Williams said.
In Oakland — which instituted its own curfew on Monday — police arrested about 60 people Sunday, including three for allegedly shooting at the city’s police headquarters.
Across from Target on Broadway in Oakland — a stretch heavily damaged Friday — church bells rang out at First Presbyterian Church on Monday afternoon. Interim Pastor Jeff Kunkel and former Oakland City Administrator Henry Gardner and a few dozen others stood on the church steps waiting for peaceful protesters making their way down the street from Oakland Technical High School.
Gardner said the destruction in downtown Oakland “makes my heart sink” but he understands the rage inside protesters agitated by police violence.
“A white police officer in Minneapolis and his partners who stood by and did nothing started this. The anarchists are finishing it, and the peaceful protest is between all of it. It’s sad but predictable,” he said.
Staff writers Annie Sciacca, Ethan Baron and David Debolt contributed to this story.