Manhattan Beach an improbable focal point for protests in 2020 SHARE In November, parents and students held a rally in Polliwog Park, calling for schools to be reopened. Photo by JP Cordero Joe Franklin leads a May 18 rally at the Manhattan Beach City Hall of protesters demanding that businesses be allowed to reopen. In November, Franklin was elected to the city council. Photo by JP Cordero The pandemic in Manhattan Beach was met with an uneasy mixture of community cooperation and outright defiance in a year in which the city’s conflicts would mirror the nation’s. Manhattan Beach by year’s end will have experienced four deaths and more than 750 COVID-19 cases, a lower incidence than most of Los Angeles County and much of the United States, but by global metrics a higher incidence rate than India, Russia, and Peru. Yet the city found itself in the regional and sometimes national spotlight as the pandemic progressed, first when a surfer was fined for defying a public health order not to surf, then when Mayor Pro Tem Suzanne Hadley downplayed the pandemic on MSNBC, and finally when the City of Manhattan Beach helped its restaurants evade county and state health orders by taking over outdoor dining decks. Manhattan Beach also found itself in the spotlight for the other crisis roiling America, the Black Lives Matter protests. BLM activists staged a protest at the Manhattan Beach pier and the city’s own tortured racial history at Bruce’s Beach came under renewed scrutiny.