On the overcast April morning when Sara Cantor sat in her wheelchair wearing a keffiyeh and bright-pink vest in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge, her job was to keep things from spiraling. 

As the designated police liaison for a pro-Palestine protest that had halted traffic across one of the world’s most recognizable landmarks, she spent four hours talking — to cops, to organizers, to anyone who needed calming down. It worked, and the standoff was resolved without physical force.

But two years later, Cantor faces felony charges and up to 15 years in prison for her role that day.

“We are being charged with falsely imprisoning motorists who were unable to drive their cars forward for a few hours — versus the experiences of Palestinians in Gaza, who have been living in an open-air prison for two and a half years,” Cantor said in an interview, with the bridge behind her.

Cantor is one of seven defendants facing felony conspiracy charges this week in San Francisco Superior Court over their role in the protest. 

She has paid a steep price for that day. The human cost of two years of legal proceedings is not abstract. She has taken time off work for court dates, only to be sent home when they are delayed. Family members have traveled to town for hearings that didn’t materialize.

“There’s just this sense of being beaten down by the process itself,” she said.

• False imprisonment or legal protest? Golden Gate Bridge demonstrators await verdict

Twenty-six people were arrested at the bridge April 15, 2024. Cantor was the last demonstrator detained and was transported alone in a squad car to San Francisco County Jail on Seventh Street. She was held for around 29 hours, half of which she said was spent in isolation. The San Francisco district attorney’s office initially declined to file charges, and the demonstrators were released.

Despite a precedent in which protesters who shut down the Bay Bridge during the APEC conference were offered five hours of community service in exchange for dismissal, new arrest warrants were issued in August 2024 for Cantor and her co-defendants.

They turned themselves in and were incarcerated a second time. It was then that they learned the full scope of what they were facing: 18 were charged with misdemeanor conspiracy and eight with felony conspiracy. False imprisonment charges were also filed — a legal theory that Cantor argues is unprecedented in state protest cases.

The case has narrowed since. The group of eight was whittled to seven after a judge found insufficient evidence against one. Dozens of false imprisonment counts were dropped or dismissed; 10 remain. Two additional charges — failure to disperse and refusal to obey an officer — apply only to Cantor.

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Separately, the Golden Gate Bridge Agency has dropped its $163,000 financial restitution claim against the protesters over the loss of toll revenue.

A spokesperson for the district attorney’s office declined to comment, “as this case will soon be assigned to a courtroom for trial, and we will not be litigating this case in the press.”

At the time of the protest, Cantor was a nonprofit accountant. The grinding legal process prompted a career pivot — she is now working as a freelance paralegal, focusing exclusively on criminal defense.

The months-long trial to come made it impossible for her to take a permanent position, but she has come to love legal work and says she is considering becoming an attorney.

If the prosecution was intended to isolate and demoralize, as Cantor believes, it has had the opposite effect. Her co-defendants, she says, have become like family — going camping together, accompanying one another to medical appointments, helping with moves.

“State repression like this often has the effect of turning protesters away from each other,” she said. “We have really responded to this by coming together.”

She notes that today’s political landscape looks nothing like that of April 2024. She sees the change in federal administration coinciding with growing recognition that conventional channels of political engagement have their limits. She has seen mass demonstrations — including recent “No Kings” protests — draw record-breaking crowds and observed residents in Minneapolis and other cities taking direct action to protect neighbors and loved ones. 

“I’ve seen people acknowledging and naming and accepting that traditional methods of engaging with the government are not as effective as we would like,” she said. “I think there’s a greater understanding among the public of why an action like they saw on April 15, 2024, makes sense.”

Asked whether she would go back and change what happened that morning, Cantor did not hesitate.

“My answer is no,” she said. “That’s both because I think that our protest was necessary and important — and also because of the beautiful community that I’ve gained through this process.”

On a recent drive on Interstate 580, Cantor spotted a hand-lettered sign demonstrators had draped over a pedestrian overpass in Berkeley. It read: “This bridge hates genocide.” She has not forgotten it.

“I think that the same thing is true of the Golden Gate Bridge,” she said. “And I love it for that.”