Video of man’s confrontation with SF climate change protesters goes viral

A pamphlet for environmental activist group Extinction Rebellion SF Bay Area. A pamphlet for environmental activist group Extinction Rebellion SF Bay Area. Photo: Extinction Rebellion SF Bay Area Photo: Extinction Rebellion SF Bay Area Image 1 of / 44 Caption Close Video of man’s confrontation with SF climate change protesters goes viral 1 / 44 Back to Gallery

On Oct. 16, a group of climate change protesters from Extinction Rebellion gathered at Golden Gate Avenue and Gough Street in San Francisco, holding hands at a crosswalk to block traffic. A video live-streamed from the Vigil for Democracy Facebook page shows young protesters singing and holding a banner that says "walk the talk" when a man emerges from behind them, grabs the sign and tosses it over a fence.

"I gotta go to work! Get the f— out the way," the man yells, then appears to snatch the phone out of the hands of the person filming and throws it into the street. Another video filmed out the window of a building overlooking the intersection shows the incident from a different angle, with clapping and laughing heard when the man grabs the sign and throws the woman's cell phone.

The live-streamed video has 12,000 views on Facebook, although another copy of the video with a caption incorrectly identifying the protestors as members of antifa had more than one million views and 14,000 shares on Friday.

Peaceful, singing @xrsfbay youth activists attacked this morning. Please RT to help us ID the man in grey scrubs. At Golden Gate and Gough in San Francisco. Possibly a @CPMCinSF employee? 1/x pic.twitter.com/buEQ6uaQl6 — Vigil For Democracy 🆘 (@vigil4democracy) October 17, 2019

“We are not antifa,” Nancy Roberts, who spoke on behalf of Extinction Rebellion in the San Francisco Bay Area, confirmed to The Associated Press. “We are explicitly non-violent.”

The organization said it has not filed a police report for the incident, which the San Francisco Police Department confirmed.

We spoke with members of Extinction Rebellion about the incident shown in the video, but no one wished to share their name due to safety concerns over online threats. The anonymous woman who filmed the live-stream said that her phone was damaged after being thrown into the street. She emphasized that many of the protestors present that day were high schoolers.

ALSO: Climate activists block roads, march in global protests

Protestors blocking traffic in San Francisco is not unusual, with climate activists blocking several blocks along Montgomery Street just last month. In July, hundreds of immigration detention center protestors blocked traffic in the Financial District.

Extinction Rebellion is a global climate protest movement that launched in the United Kingdom in 2018, blockading five bridges in London to rally support around the urgency of the climate crisis. They use non-violent civil disobedience to compel government action, taking inspiration from other grassroots movements such as Occupy and the civil rights movement.

“When people say, 'Why don’t you go on the sidewalk and stay out of the way, don’t inconvenience me while you protest'… that’s been done for decades and it hasn’t worked,” said one protester. “It’s not convenient. It’s never convenient.”

Madeline Wells is an SFGate editorial assistant. Email: madeline.wells@sfgate.com | Twitter: @madwells22