SAN FRANCISCO -- The organizer of a "freedom rally" planned Saturday near the Golden Gate Bridge scrapped the idea in favor of a news conference about 15 miles away, and protesters claimed victory when both events were canceled.
Joey Gibson of the group Patriot Prayer instead spoke in the nearby city of Pacifica on Saturday. He had earlier said in a Facebook post that he would abandon plans for the rally at San Francisco's Crissy Field in favor of a news conference at Alamo Square, a park about 4 miles away. But city officials surrounded Alamo Square with a fence and sent scores of police officers -- some in riot gear -- to keep people out.
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee defended the city's response.
"If people want to have the stage in San Francisco, they better have a message that contributes to people's lives rather than find ways to hurt them," Lee said Saturday. "That's why certain voices found it very difficult to have their voices heard today."
Lee had previously said of Patriot Prayer: "We don't trust this group. I never have from the beginning."
More than 1,000 demonstrators against Patriot Prayer still turned out around Alamo Square park waving signs condemning white supremacists and chanting: "Whose streets? Our streets!" Hundreds of others took to the streets in the Castro neighborhood.
"San Francisco as a whole, we are a liberal city, and this is not a place for hate or any sort of bigotry of any kind," Bianca Harris said. "I think it's a really powerful message that we're sending to people who come here to try to spew messages of hate that it's just not welcome in this city."
Benjamin Sierra, who organized counterprotesters, said the demonstration had become a "victory rally."
Gibson said Saturday that he canceled his plans in San Francisco based on what he said were anonymous threats on social media and worries that civic leaders and law enforcement officers would fail to protect rallygoers.
"My hope is to be able to talk to normal citizens without all the extremists," said Gibson, who identifies as Japanese American.
Other speakers at Patriot Prayer's news conference included blacks such as Will Johnson, who said he is obviously not a white supremacist and was frustrated about the use of the term in connection with Patriot Prayer and the rally. Several speakers said they support President Donald Trump and want to join with moderates to promote understanding and free speech.
Members of the group ended the news conference abruptly when they heard that members of an anti-fascist movement were headed to Pacifica.
Gibson said his group disavows racism and hatred and insisted his gathering would be peaceful. He said Saturday in a phone interview that he felt like San Francisco's Democratic leaders had shut him down.
"They're definitely doing a great job of trying to make sure my message doesn't come out," he said.
When Gibson canceled the rally on Friday, he said his supporters would instead attend an anti-Marxist rally in nearby Berkeley today. But a short time later, the organizer of the Berkeley rally called it off. Organizer Amber Cummings, who has said Marxism is being taught in U.S. schools, has been photographed at California rallies holding a sign that reads "Transwomen for Trump."
Asked Saturday whether he still planned to go to Berkeley today, Gibson said he would "analyze the situation."
Berkeley police were planning for a number of contingencies, police spokesman Jenn Coats said in an email.
Tension over the gatherings had built in the two weeks since violence broke out at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. James Alex Fields Jr., 20, was charged with murder after authorities said he drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing a 32-year-old woman.
A multiracial coalition of faith, student and community activists announced Saturday that they plan to march from Charlottesville to the nation's capital in response to what they called Trump's failure to confront the white supremacy on display at the Virginia rally.
The 10-day march will begin Monday and is expected to stop at Confederate monuments along the route. Organized by groups including the Women's March on Washington, Color of Change, Indivisible, Repairers of the Breach and the Movement for Black Lives, the march is expected to end in Washington on Sept. 6.
Organizers say white supremacist violence, rhetoric and policies have intensified since Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and must be confronted. The Aug. 12 rally in Charlottesville -- where protesters including professed neo-Nazis and white nationalists rallied to save a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee -- broke into violence, and counterprotester Heather Heyer was killed when she was struck by the car that plowed through a crowd.
The president condemned white supremacy, defended Confederate statues and blamed "many sides" for the violence. Those critical of Trump wanted him to go further in rejecting racial extremism.
Information for this article was contributed by Janie Har, Errin Haines Whack and Haven Daley of The Associated Press.
A Section on 08/27/2017