San Francisco train stations closed by anti-police protests

By Dan Levine and Emmett Berg SAN FRANCISCO - (Reuters) - Activists protesting police shootings of young black men staged demonstrations at three San Francisco rail stations Friday, forcing officials to divert trains and sending morning commuters miles out of their way. No injuries were reported, and two people were arrested on misdemeanor charges of interfering with the operation of a rail system, Bay Area Rapid Transit police spokesman Jim Allison said. The protests, dubbed "BART Friday: No Business as Usual," targeted a commuter rail system that serves some 400,000 riders a day in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and surrounding suburbs. With demonstrators banging spoons on passing trains, officials closed the Powell, Montgomery and Embarcadero stations at the height of morning rush hour, forcing glum passengers to stay on board well past their usual stops. "Now I am in trouble because I have to try to figure out how to take the bus or muni. I work at a preschool and don't want to be too late," said Florence Biswas, 48, a preschool teacher commuting into the city from Oakland. "I want to support (the protesters) but at the same time I don't want them to do what they've done. This is very hard for people like me. I work at a school and the whole class is going to be screwed up," Biswas said. The stations all reopened by mid-morning but roughly another 100 protesters gathered at a downtown federal courthouse, some of them chaining themselves to the entrance. "We are here because of what this government represents," protester Rhonda Ramiro said. "The system in America to oppress and exploit black people is also a tool to export these polices around the world." According to the activists' Facebook page, Friday's action was part of a planned weekend of protests dubbed "Reclaim King's Legacy Weekend of Actions," organized by the Anti-Police Terrorism Project and Occupy SF. Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a federal holiday in honor of the late civil rights activist. On Thursday, anti-police-violence protesters closed two sections of a major highway outside of Boston. The Bay Area called for charges to be dropped against the so-called Black Friday 14, who were arrested in November after chaining themselves to a train in Oakland. That protest was part of a wave of actions after a Missouri grand jury declined to indict Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown. (Additional reporting by Robert Galbraith, Karen Brooks and Dan Whitcomb; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Scott Malone, Susan Heavey, Leslie Adler, David Gregorio and Nick Zieminski)