Daniel Borgström writes: It was Saturday, September 24th.... The solidarity rally was to be held in downtown Oakland, at the triangular-shaped plaza where Telegraph Avenue splits off from Broadway. It was 7:30 p.m. when I arrived; Gerald Sanders was speaking to a gathering of a couple hundred people. Almost everybody there was quite young. A banner read: "Revolt with Charlotte."

Several dozen police were taking up strategic positions along Broadway and Telegraph. In the dim light of early evening, they looked ominous though they weren't actually in riot gear. Mayor Libby Schaaf had declared a ban on nighttime protests last year; then two weeks later she astonished everyone by denying that any nighttime protest curfew existed. So it wasn't certain what she might have in mind for the police to do.

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