Organizers Say Protests Planned in Oakland, San Francisco Tonight

Protests against police brutality are planned in San Francisco, Oakland and across the country tonight amid New Year's Eve celebrations.

Organizers of the protest in San Francisco said that a nonviolent rally is scheduled to take place at the Embarcadero BART station on Market Street at 9 p.m. and will continue into the early morning of 2015.

In Oakland, protesters plan to meet at Broadway and 14th Street at 9 p.m. and will protest into the new year against recent police killings across the country.

D'Andre Teeter, an activist with the Bay Area Stop Mass Incarceration Network, said tonight's activities will allow protesters a chance to show visitors who come into San Francisco and Oakland that the movement to end police brutality is still alive and growing.

Teeter, who spoke at a news conference outside the Hall of Justice in San Francisco today, said the protest tonight will allow protesters to express themselves.

"All different nationalities, old and young, standing together, fighting for justice. That's something really impressive, and it does attract a lot of people. And that's the kind of society we want," Teeter said.

At noon on New Year's Day, a memorial will be held for Oscar Grant III at Oakland's Fruitvale station, according to Teeter.

Grant, an unarmed black man, was shot to death on a train platform at the Fruitvale station by a BART police officer early in the morning on New Year's Day in 2009.

Eleanor Levine, an activist with the organization Code Pink, said she is appalled by recent police killings and encouraged anyone who would like to see an end to police brutality to join protesters tonight to make their voices heard.

Levine said she will be attending a Code Pink peace vigil at Market and Montgomery streets in San Francisco at 5:30 p.m. today before heading to Oakland for the protest against police brutality.

Levine, an Oakland resident, said the Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality and State Repression, a group created in the wake of Grant's death, has asked people not to take BART during New Year's Eve and New Year's Day in honor of him.

Other protests against police brutality are planned across the country, according to Teeter, including New York City, where a rally will be held at Union Square before protesters march to Times Square, where a massive crowd will be gathered for the annual New Year's Eve ball drop.