Protesters block highway, stop train in California over killing of blacks

Merchants in downtown Berkeley cleaned up broken glass on Monday and took stock of looting after a protest turned violent Sunday night

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Hundreds of people marched through Berkeley for a third night a row, blocking a major highway and stopping a train as activists in this ultra-liberal bastion protest grand jury decisions not to indict white police officers in the deaths of two unarmed black men.

Protesters blocked traffic on both sides of Interstate 80 in Berkeley, while another group stood on and sat on train tracks, forcing an Amtrak passenger train to stop last night.

A large group of people began peacefully marching earlier Monday through downtown Berkeley. The first stop for demonstrators shouting, "Who do you protect? Peaceful protest" was the Berkeley Police Department. A line of officers in riot gear blocked them from getting close to the building. The group then headed to a Bay Area Rapid Transit train station and sat outside, prompting authorities to briefly shut down the station.

But as the night went on, the protesters divided into smaller groups that disrupted traffic and train passengers. The California Highway Patrol said in a tweet that some in the crowd tore down fencing to enter the freeway.

Merchants in downtown Berkeley yesterday cleaned up broken glass and took stock of the previous night's looting after a protest that turned violent Sunday night.

Although many activists in other parts of the country have gone home, demonstrations in Berkeley and Oakland are still active, reflecting the area's long history of protest dating to the 1960s.

The crowds that came out to protest in Berkeley numbered only a few hundred, but some are not college students or residents so much as full-time demonstrators who protest anything war, prison conditions and economic inequality and sometimes use demonstrations as a pretext for violence and vandalism, just as they did during the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates said a tiny fraction of protesters are obscuring the wider message calling for reform of policing policies nationwide.