East Bay Protests: Protesters Disrupt Peter Thiel Speech

Update, 8 a.m. Thursday: Black Lives Matter protesters forced their way into a UC Berkeley auditorium last night, forcing PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel to end a talk he was giving on entrepreneurship to hundreds of students.

KQED's Andrew Stelzer captured video of the incident. At one point, Berkeley Forum attendees shout "Go Home. Go Home," at the protesters.

From The Daily Californian:

“We honestly didn’t think the protests would interfere,” said Pierre Bourbonnais, president of the Berkeley Forum and former marketing manager at the Daily Californian. “It’s pretty unimaginable and unfortunate. I’m in support of free speech, but this is not the right venue for that. I’m very disappointed.”

Bourbonnais said he had received calls and emails preceding the event that asked if the protests would disrupt the address.

Thiel left with his handlers as the protesters entered the auditorium, according to Bourbonnais. Protesters shouted, “No police state — no NSA!” as they stormed the stage. Bourbonnais described the protesters’ entrance as a “tug-of-war battle” between Berkeley Forum members and protesters.

Last night's march was smaller than previous evenings. After winding through Berkeley, it eventually ended up in downtown Oakland.

Update, 6:20 p.m. Wednesday:  Protesters plan to gather at 7 p.m. at Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue for a fifth consecutive night of demonstrations in Berkeley.

Update, 4:30 p.m. Wednesday: The Berkeley High march has just concluded, and students are back on campus.

Update, 3:30 p.m. Wednesday: A group of about 500 students from Berkeley High is currently marching peacefully through Berkeley, the city's police department reports.

At 3 p.m., the march started out at the school on Allston Way and headed south on Martin Luther King Jr. Way.  Half an hour later, the group was marching north on Telegraph Avenue from Channing Way.

Traffic is reportedly heavy.

A story this afternoon from Berkeleyside reports that another group plans to meet at 4 p.m. on UC Berkeley campus to watch a live stream of a Michael Brown-related tribunal in Ferguson, Missouri. Afterward, that gathering also intends to march.

Update, 8:30 a.m. Wednesday: At the end of the night, a group of about 20 protesters broke off from the rest of the movement to vandalize and loot the Pak N Save grocery store, 7-Eleven and CVS pharmacy near 40th Street and San Pablo Ave in Emeryville, The San Francisco Chronicle reports. 

Update, 10:30 p.m. Tuesday: At the height of the group's march, about 1,000 protesters took part, making their way from Berkeley to Oakland to Emeryville as the night progressed.

Outside of Berkeley City Hall,  Councilman Kriss Worthington told several hundred protesters that he is demanding an investigation into police response on Saturday evening. He is also calling for reform within the police department.

Around 9:15 p.m., protesters breached Highway 24, but were removed by police within 10 minutes. Officers used flash grenades and non-lethal projectiles while clearing the roadway, says KQED's Isabel Angell. The CHP arrested 13 during the incident.

An image of Reuters photojournalist Stephen Lam was widely circulated on social media. Lam reportedly said he was pepper sprayed near the Highway 24/580 offramp by a CHP officer for no known reason.

This allegation comes on the heels of several incidents where police force was used on credentialed journalists covering the protests Saturday evening. The Northern California Society for Professional Journalists posted an open letter denouncing the police response.

Check back Wednesday morning for updates.

Update, 4 p.m. Tuesday: The latest fallout from a series of Berkeley protests against police violence: The Berkeley City Council has canceled its Tuesday night meeting. The decision was made as activists from Occupy Oakland called for a shutdown of the meeting. A statement from Mayor Tom Bates suggested the meeting was scratched because of capacity issues:

"The Council Chambers can hold about 125 people, and we understand substantially more people are interested in attending the meeting due to recent events in Berkeley. We want to ensure that the community has as much access as possible to public meetings. The Agenda for the December 9 meeting will be rescheduled for a future date and public notice will be given prior to that meeting. A notice of meeting cancellation will be issued by the City Clerk and publicly posted. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

Occupy Oakland is still calling for a 7 p.m. activist "convergence" at the park adjacent to the Berkeley Civic Center building. Other activists have called for a 5 p.m. gathering and march from Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue -- in part to protest the jailing of 150 activists arrested after Interstate 80 was blocked during Monday night's march.

That demonstration marked the third straight night of demonstrations in Berkeley against police killings earlier this year of African-American men -- one, Michael Brown, in a suburb of St. Louis and the other, Eric Garner, in the New York City borough of Staten Island.

The events have also taken on a much more local focus, with protesters reacting to aggressive police tactics on Saturday night, the first evening of the demonstrations. Police that night used tear gas, batons and "less than lethal" munitions to try to disperse several hundred demonstrators. The second night of the protest was marked by widespread window-smashing and other vandalism -- though most of the hundreds who participated in a marathon evening of marching were nonviolent.

Update, 9 a.m. Tuesday: The California Highway Patrol reports that it arrested 150 people near the Powell Street ramps to Interstate 80 in Emeryville. The CHP says most of those arrested will face charges of resisting arrest/obstructing a peace officer.

Berkeley police said a total of nine people were arrested there during Monday night's event. Police said there were no reports of vandalism or other violence in the city during the evening-long protest.

Update, 11:50 p.m. Monday:

After a standoff of more than an hour between police and protesters in the Powell Street Center Shopping Plaza in Emeryville, police have begun making arrests.

Check back in the morning for all the latest information.

Update 10:16 p.m.:

*TRAVEL ADVISORY* Protesters have mostly been cleared from eb and wb 80 but traffic remains heavy use 24 to 680 to avoid delays.

— CHP Golden Gate (@CHP_GoldenGate) December 9, 2014

Original Post:

Following a weekend of protests, a crowd of several hundred people left the UC Berkeley campus around 5 p.m. Monday evening. By 8 p.m. they had shut down I-80 in both directions and brought an Amtrak train to rest.

After heading south on Telegraph Avenue and traveling through Berkeley, the crowd reached its first police barricade of the night in front of the Berkeley Police Station on Martin Luther King Jr. Way between Addison and Center streets. Around this time, BART reported the Downtown Berkeley station was closed temporarily "due to civil disturbance."

The crowd eventually headed west down University Avenue toward Interstate 80, where it was met by another line of police, this time blocking the on/off ramps near Sixth Street in West Berkeley.

Shortly before 8 p.m. a few dozen protesters made their way onto a pedestrian foot bridge over I-80, just south of University Avenue. There, they were met by a handful of police on motorcycles, as seen from ABC 7's helicopter.

Soon after that, around 8 p.m. protesters filed onto I-80, temporarily shutting down westbound lanes.

Around 8:30 p.m. protesters managed to stop an Amtrak commuter train by blocking the tracks at the Addison Street crossing. KQED reporter Isabel Angell reported one woman parked a white SUV on the tracks, while other people laid down on the tracks in front of the stopped train.

By 8:40 p.m. protesters had once again made their way onto the freeway, this time shutting down both lanes for an extended period of time.

For the 2nd time tonight RT @511SFBay: All Lanes Closed on EB I-80 before University in Berkeley Due to Protesters. http://t.co/1tAB8u8tjY

— KQED News (@KQEDnews) December 9, 2014

I-80 remained closed for over an hour, with a large crowd of protesters blocking both lanes of traffic.

There was a tense standoff on the pedestrian overpass crossing I-80 between protesters and police. KQED photographer Mark Andrew Boyer was on hand.

Isabel Angell, Monica Lam, Adam Grossberg, Olivia Allen-Price, Julia McEvoy and Mark Andrew Boyer contributed reporting for this story.