Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown's Frank Advice For Democrats On Violent Protests
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- If Democrats don't denounce the violence associated with street protests, the Republicans could exploit the issue to their advantage in the election, said former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.
"Biden and Harris really ought to decry and indicate how awful it is to engage in the kind of conduct that's being translated into violence attributable to them," Brown said.
The Black Lives Matter demonstrations are legitimate, Brown said, but destruction and violence in the late evening hours are becoming increasingly counterproductive.
"Protests ought to occur in the daylight hours when you can read the signs that I'm carrying," Brown said "Nighttime protests are only designed to conceal who's doing the protesting and what they intend to do."
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Oakland residents have mixed feelings about the value of the destruction of property.
"People don't do [anything] when we're not rioting," said one young Latino who did not want to be identified. "When we peacefully try to project how we feel toward the situation, nothing happens. So I'm saying, like, if we've got to burn the system down, we're going to burn it down."
A middle aged African-American woman who also did not want to be identified said she vehemently disagreed with destruction and violence.
"You're out here destroying property trying to get your point over," she said. "You can't get your point across like that. As an African-American woman, I don't want you out there falsely representing me and you're out there breaking laws and committing crime. Don't represent me. Because I don't stand for that."
