The caravan started in Santa Rosa and arrived at about 11 a.m. at the Vintage Oaks Shopping Center in Novato. It ended at the Marin Gateway Shopping Center in Marin City, according to Sgt. Brenton Schneider of the Marin County sheriff’s office. He said the caravan included an estimated 250 to 350 vehicles. Nobody was arrested, but the sheriff’s office received reports of arguments, fights, as well as paintball shots and eggs chucked at the Trump supporters.
The woman recording says they were trying to leave the Marin City Target parking lot when an angry mob starting screaming at them.
The caravan started in Santa Rosa, then moved to Novato and then finally Marin City.
The woman says it is insulting that there are false reporters that the car caravan was out trying to incite something.
Marin City residents expressed their concerns on social media.
Marin City resident Amber Allen-Peirson, who works in the wellness center at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, said she arrived around 11:30 a.m. after receiving several texts that local residents were being insulted by the interlopers. By the time she arrived, tensions were already high, with several dozen residents confronting the Trump supporters.
“They were calling children n–,” she said. “They were yelling at kids I know, kids I care about.”
Allen-Peirson said she was worried that the Trump convoy had purposefully selected Marin City as a minority-majority community in a county that is 80% white. Marin City has had a strong African American presence since World War II, when many people worked in wartime shipyards.
“I’m concerned about Marin City, because it’s the only Black community in Marin and there is only one entrance and one exit,” she said. “Are they going to attack us in the future? What was their point? Were they trying to make a statement?”
She said she was grateful nobody was hurt “because the tension was high and the environment was definitely unsafe.”
“It was like the Taliban had come to town. It felt like local terrorism, especially since it was Sunday, which is a holy day for the black community,” she said. “If this is what is happening on November 1st, then what is going to happen on the 3rd or 4th? It makes me scared of what we can expect moving forward.”
Paul Austin, a Marin City resident who is executive director of the youth organization Play Marin, said he arrived at the shopping center around 11:30 a.m. after finishing a workout with a group of kids in Mill Valley.
“The entire Gateway Shopping Center was nothing but Trump supporters,” he said. “There is nobody who can tell me Marin City wasn’t targeted because we are the only diverse community in the county.”
