Palestinian people and their allies are continuing calls for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas. Thousands of people filled San Francisco’s Civic Center on Saturday, joining nationwide rallies calling for an end to the fighting and for the U.S. to stop sending aid to Israel. The rally was the biggest so far in the Bay Area since the war began on October 7, and one of numerous actions in other cities, including a massive demonstration in Washington, D.C., with other demonstrations taking place across Europe.

A woman waves a Palestinian flag at the International Day of Solidarity: Free Palestine rally in front of City Hall in San Francisco on Nov. 4, 2023. (Kathryn Styer Martínez for KQED)

“I am optimistic about the unbelievable outpouring. Just coming here on BART this morning, half the car was people with signs,” said Seth Morrison, a member of the national board of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, at the rally. “I’m seeing all over the country our JVP chapters, our actions are bigger than ever.”

Seth Morrison, 72, attends the International Day of Solidarity: Free Palestine rally. Morrison, who lives in El Cerrito, has been organizing with Jewish Voice for Peace since 2011. (Kathryn Styer Martínez for KQED)

Suzanne Ali, an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement Bay Area Chapter, says she hopes the marches happening across the country draw attention to the thousands of Palestinians that have been killed in Gaza since the war began.

“What we’re seeing today is a shock to the human conscience.  People need to focus on the real root issue of violence which is Israeli settler colonial occupation.”

Suzanne Ali, 25, speaks with reporters at the International Day of Solidarity: Free Palestine rally. Ali of San Francisco is an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement. (Kathryn Styer Martínez for KQED)

Andrea Muir said she has family in Gaza that have been displaced from their home, and that one of her cousins has died as a result of the fighting.

“It doesn’t feel right to sit at home,” said Muir.

It’s been a month since Hamas launched an unprecedented cross-border attack into Israel from Gaza, killing at least 1,400 people and taking approximately 240 hostages, according to the Israeli government. In the weeks since, Israel’s unrelenting attacks on Gaza have killed more than 9,400 people, at least 3,600 of whom were children, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.  Over 1.4 million people have been displaced. Calls for a cease-fire, including a call for a humanitarian pause from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday, have so far been rebuffed by Israel, as supplies of food, water and medicine in Gaza run dangerously low.

The Bay Area has seen a series of vigils and rallies in recent weeks.  Last Saturday an estimated 15,000 protesters marched up Market Street in downtown San Francisco and onto the Highway 101. The following day, hundreds attended a tightly guarded pro-Israel rally in downtown San Francisco at Yerba Buena Gardens.

Thousands gather at the International Day of Solidarity: Free Palestine rally in front of City Hall. (Kathryn Styer Martínez for KQED)

Dozens of Bay Area residents traveled to Washington D.C. this weekend, joining the march there calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel, an end to the siege of Gaza, and for an immediate ceasefire.

“I have to do what I can in this moment and onwards to ensure that more Palestinians aren’t displaced from their lands, like my grandparents, using U.S. taxpayer dollars,” said Rami Abdelkarim, an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement in the Bay Area. “I want to join the people who refuse to sit idly by while our country funds the destruction and the displacement of my ancestors and my people.”

Thousands showed up to attend the International Day of Solidarity: Free Palestine rally. (Kathryn Styer Martínez for KQED)

San Francisco rally attendee Kisae Hussein said she feels a moral obligation to protest because her country, the United States, is spending tax dollars to support Israel.

“It’s hard not to feel despair when there’s all these marches and our representatives are still doing what they’re doing,” she said. “But if there’s enough pushback, if we boycott, divest, sanction, if we keep moving forward with these actions I think we have to have hope that something will happen despite how impossible it may seem.”

Adam Shain, 6, attends the International Day of Solidarity: Free Palestine rally with his mom Faten, who says they currently have family in Jordan and Palestine. (Kathryn Styer Martínez for KQED)

The response to the protestors’ calls by California politicians has been mixed. California’s leading Senate candidates, running to fill the late Senator Dianne Feinstein’s seat, have largely expressed support for Israel’s response to the Hamas attacks. Meanwhile, East Bay Rep. Barbara Lee is calling for a cease-fire and is stressing that Israel must respond “within the framework of international law.”

While the White House has not called for a cease-fire thus far, President Biden on Wednesday did call for a humanitarian pause in Gaza, at a time of mounting pressure from human rights groups, and even members of his own Democratic Party. But a majority of the U.S. Congress continues to support the Israeli military. The House of Representatives recently approved $14.5 billion in military aid for Israel.

On Thursday, a San Francisco law firm sued the Biden administration in a push to evacuate Palestinian-Americans trapped in Gaza, saying that while some American citizens have been evacuated, the administration has so far failed to bring Palestinian-Americans home to safety.

Attendees at the International Day of Solidarity: Free Palestine rally in front of City Hall call for the Israeli military to cease fire in Palestine. (Kathryn Styer Martínez for KQED)

The Bay Area’s Jewish Community Relations Council CEO Tyler Gregory said the JCRC and the Jewish Community are calling on the Biden administration to do everything to provide humanitarian aid and work with Israelis to minimize loss of life. But, he added, Israel would not live with a cease-fire until the hostages are returned and Hamas is “no longer ruling the Gaza Strip.”

“We think that it’s reasonable that Israel has the right to self-defense and to try to reclaim its hostages,” Gregory said on Friday. “And we know that the United States would do the exact same thing. There is a lot of hypocrisy going around by those that are denying Israel the right to finish this.”

United Nations experts are warning that Gaza is “running out of time” and are calling for an immediate cease-fire “to prevent genocide.” Amnesty International has referred to Israeli governance of Palestinians as “oppressive and discriminatory” and “a system of apartheid.”

Organizers are planning more actions in the weeks ahead, including a protest at the Oakland Federal Building on Thursday.

KQED’s Juan Carlos Lara, Annelise Finney, Attila Pelit, David Marks and Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman contributed to this story.

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Image Credits: Cruise

Protestors gathered Monday outside Cruise’s headquarters in San Francisco after reports of one of its robotaxis blocking an ambulance with a patient on board who later died.

The incident, which the San Francisco Fire Department reported last week, happened on August 14, when a driver hit a pedestrian in the city around 11 p.m. The department said emergency responders had trouble getting from the collision to the hospital because two Cruise robotaxis blocked the road. According to the report, the blockage caused a delay in getting the pedestrian to the hospital, where they later passed away.

Cruise denied the accusation that its robotaxis hindered the ambulance from getting away from the emergency scene, and video evidence shown to TechCrunch mostly backs that claim.

The event occurred days after Cruise and its main competitor Waymo were awarded permits from California regulators to expand their robotaxi services throughout San Francisco 24/7. The hearing to determine the permit expansions had been delayed twice amid mounting opposition to offering the companies free rein. Residents, ride-hail and taxi drivers and city agencies called out Cruise and Waymo after numerous instances of robotaxis malfunctioning and blocking the flow of traffic, sometimes for hours.

Aside from causing traffic delays, many San Franciscans feared that stalled robotaxis could impede the work of emergency responders.

“The patient was packaged for transport with life-threatening injuries, but we were unable to leave the scene initially due to the Cruise vehicles not moving,” reads the report, first reported by Forbes. “The fact that Cruise autonomous vehicles continue to block ingress and egress to critical 911 calls is unacceptable.”

In a statement, Cruise pushed back against the fire department’s statement, saying its vehicle did not impede the ambulance from getting to the hospital and calling the department’s statement “not accurate.” A spokesperson for the company also called out the irony of pinning the pedestrian’s death on Cruise, when the pedestrian was hit by a human driver.

“The first vehicle promptly clears the area once the light turns green and the other stops in the lane to yield to first responders who are directing traffic,” a Cruise spokesperson wrote in a statement. “Throughout the entire duration the AV is stopped, traffic remains unblocked and flowing to the right of the AV. The ambulance behind the AV had a clear path to pass the AV as other vehicles, including the ambulance, proceeded to do so. As soon as the victim was loaded into the ambulance, the ambulance left the scene immediately and was never impeded from doing so by the AV.”

Cruise showed video of the event to TechCrunch, and we can confirm the scene happened more or less in the manner Cruise describes.

There were indeed two Cruise vehicles at the scene, alongside other cars trying to make room for first responders. One of the Cruise vehicles looked to be somewhat in the way of a fire truck, clumsily moving out of its path and, eventually, through the intersection where the pedestrian had been struck. This happened before the ambulance arrived. When the ambulance arrived, it parked behind the second Cruise vehicle, which had stopped just before the intersection in the second to the right lane of a four-lane street. A law enforcement officer stood in front of the Cruise vehicle directing traffic, and cars could be seen driving in the far right lane past the robotaxi — all the while, first responders are addressing the pedestrian and putting them in the ambulance.

The video showed the first responders getting into the ambulance and backing up slightly to get distance from the parked Cruise vehicle, then maneuvering to the left of the vehicle seconds later.

The Cruise vehicle was not stalled, according to a spokesperson, but didn’t move through the intersection because of the police officer standing in the middle of it. Cruise’s prediction algorithm is trained to always give right of way to pedestrians, and so the AV couldn’t advance at the time. While this situation calls into question how well the AVs are able to read hand gestures from emergency responders, it’s clear that the robotaxi didn’t hinder the ambulance’s path in a significant way.

That said, if the street had been a one-way, single lane road, an indecisive robotaxi parked at the intersection would have definitely been a hindrance.

The fire department did not respond in time to TechCrunch to provide more information.

Cruise’s problems are mounting in San Francisco

Despite the fact that blood does not appear to be on Cruise’s hands in this instance, the pedestrian death and Cruise’s proximity to it are part of a growing list of incidents hanging over the company like a black cloud, giving fuel to the opposition.

Protestors on Monday were seen calling for the shutdown of Cruise, as well as Waymo, with signs that read “No Mo Robos” and “Greed Kills.” Aside from public safety and traffic concerns, protestors expressed fears of robotaxis displacing hundreds of thousands of jobs in San Francisco and beyond. During the protest, loud music began to play from inside the company offices, drowning out the protests.

Since Cruise got the greenlight to expand in San Francisco, the company has been plagued by a series of public incidents.

On August 16, 10 Cruise robotaxis stalled creating a gridlock in North Beach for about 20 minutes during one of the city’s biggest music festivals. A spokesperson told TechCrunch that the vehicles stopped because there were too many pedestrians blocking their path. When that happens, a remote operator gets involved to help navigate the car out of the way. But due to the high density of crowds with cell phones, there was a lag between the remote operator and the vehicles.

Just two days later, another Cruise vehicle drove into wet cement and got stuck. The San Francisco Department of Public Works said the paving project had been properly marked off with cones and there were workers with flags at each end of the block.

That same week, a Cruise robotaxi was involved in a collision with an emergency vehicle that left a passenger injured. Cruise tweeted about the crash, saying one of its Chevy Bolt EVs entered an intersection on a green traffic light and was struck by the emergency vehicle that appeared to be en route to an emergency scene. A video posted by FriscoLive415 that includes police scanner information shows the airbags deployed in the vehicle and the passenger was complaining of a headache.

As a result, the California Department of Motor Vehicles requested that Cruise immediately reduce its robotaxi fleet by 50% in San Francisco while it conducts an investigation into the company.

On August 24, a Cruise car got into another crash in San Francisco when it was apparently attempting a left turn from the middle lane and collided with a construction backhoe. Cruise said the construction vehicle hit its AV. No injuries were reported.

Cruise is actively expanding to new cities, giving the technology more opportunities to learn and improve. But with those improvements will come mistakes and missteps, which will only continue as Cruise enters new markets.

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