300 Arrested in 2nd Day of Reagan Policy Protests in S.F.

Chanting demonstrators protesting President Reagan’s Central America policies jumped police barricades to block entry to the federal office building Wednesday in the second day of a noisy protest that has led to about 550 arrests.

Meanwhile, across the Bay at the UC Berkeley campus, 32 people--members of the Berkeley school board and writers and poets--were arrested in a continuing demonstration against the university’s investments in firms doing business with South Africa. The arrests brought to 514 the number of those detained during 29 days of demonstrations on or near the campus.

In the San Francisco demonstration, federal authorities, assisted by city police wearing riot gear, helped government employees climb over ranks of sitting demonstrators, some of whom had spent a chilly night beside the steel barricades outside the high-rise building.

The demonstrators, angered by the Reagan Administration’s trade embargo against Nicaragua, sang “We Shall Not Be Moved” as helmeted police dragged them away to be photographed and cited.

Some of the estimated 300 protesters arrested Wednesday were detained for state misdemeanor allegations of obstructing a sidewalk. Others face federal charges of creating a disturbance, according to David Wells, district supervisor for the Federal Protective Service.

The demonstration, which broke up Wednesday afternoon after several hours, was called to protest Reagan’s declaration of a trade embargo against Nicaragua, his renewed attempt to finance the anti-Sandinista rebels known as contras, and Administration proposals for $800 million in aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, organizers said.

In the Berkeley anti-apartheid demonstration, the city’s school board convened outside University Hall, headquarters for the university system. The school board approved a resolution calling for the UC system to divest itself of all stock held in companies dealing with South Africa, then with writers Jessica Mitford, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, among others, took up positions on the steps of the building.

The were detained briefly by campus police, issued misdemeanor citations for blocking a sidewalk, and then released.