This time round, the streets are quieter.
“The reactions have been fairly modest,” stated Larry Gerston, a political science professor at San Jose State College. “What I’ve been hearing, anecdotally, is that people are just worn out.”
On Sunday, the eve of Trump’s second inauguration in Washington, D.C., a number of hundred protesters marched in downtown San Francisco to decry what they known as the “billionaire agenda” that features the repeat Republican president. Trump has tapped a slew of billionaires for cupboard posts in his administration, together with Tesla and House X government Elon Musk and Silicon Valley enterprise capitalist David Sacks, who each share Bay Space skilled roots.
The march Sunday adopted minor anti-Trump rallies in Mountain View, Alameda and San Francisco the day earlier than. Additionally on Saturday, a nationwide march billed as the primary arm of the anti-Trump resistance drew a number of thousand protesters to the nation’s capital. That’s a far cry from the throng of greater than 1 million individuals who flocked to the Girls’s March in 2017.
Laura Valdéz, government director of Mission Motion, speaks through the “We Fight Back; Defeat Trump’s Extreme-Right Billionaire Agenda!” the day earlier than Donald Trumps presidential inauguration on the Civic Middle in San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Space Information Group)
However Gerston expects to see greater road protests rock the Bay Space as Trump takes workplace and begins to enact his agenda. Although the incoming president made some inroads amongst Bay Space voters in November, the area remains to be deep blue, and throngs of voters nonetheless stay hostile to the Republican’s agenda. Specifically: the president-elect’s guarantees to deport undocumented immigrants en masse, Gerston stated.
“You will begin to see various interests exercise their right to protest in much larger numbers,” he stated.
On Sunday, a number of hundred activists and organizers representing greater than 60 labor unions, immigrant advocates and leftist political teams such because the Celebration for Socialism and Liberation gathered at Civic Middle Plaza in San Francisco.
There, a collection of audio system railed in opposition to the excesses of capitalism and the nation’s rising class of billionaires, whereas urging protesters to hitch organizations devoted to defending immigrants, preventing local weather change, defending reproductive rights and extra.
The organizations in query? A slew of teams together with the Oakland Training Affiliation, Bay Space Youth Local weather Summit, the East Bay chapter of Democratic Socialists of America and pupil activists from Stanford College and the College of California at Berkeley.
Folks protest through the “We Fight Back; Defeat Trump’s Extreme-Right Billionaire Agenda!” the day earlier than Donald Trumps presidential inauguration on the Civic Middle in San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Space Information Group)
Standing atop a stake mattress truck rented from Enterprise, Lisa Eugene, an activist with the Reply Coalition, shouted right into a microphone and implored rally-goers to remain concerned throughout Trump’s second time period. Activists held indicators studying “People united will defend immigrants” and “The Bay Area Says No to Tech Billionaires.”
“We’re going to win only if we fight,” Eugene stated to cheers. “Join an organization. That’s how you become a fighter.”
Opposition to Trump’s immigration agenda animated a lot of the rally Sunday, as audio system repeatedly defended undocumented immigrants as essential to the U.S. financial system and worthy of dignity.
“It is on their backs that corporations make a filthy amount of wealth,” stated Laura Valdéz, government director of Mission Motion, a San Francisco nonprofit that gives assets for immigrants. “Let’s not forget that.”
Jesus Moctezuma, 26, stated he’s seen widespread worry in his group in San Jose about Trump’s plans to take away undocumented immigrants. Moctezuma was born in Mexico and got here to the U.S. along with his household in 2006, he stated. That’s the identical 12 months that immigrants and their advocates – together with these within the Bay Space – marched by the tens of millions to oppose a proposal in Congress that might have criminalized undocumented standing, in one of many largest protest actions in fashionable U.S. historical past.
Folks protest through the “We Fight Back; Defeat Trump’s Extreme-Right Billionaire Agenda!” protest the day earlier than Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration on the Civic Middle in San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Space Information Group)
However Moctezuma has additionally seen a rising resolve amongst immigrants to defend themselves.
“Honestly, we’re not going to take it,” he stated, whereas standing on the outskirts of the rally. “We’ve already been through a Trump presidency. We know what it’s like and we want to fight back.”
The San Jose resident stated he’s concerned in a Bay Space-wide “rapid response network” to determine when Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers conduct raids and to trace the data of people who find themselves detained in order that they’ll discover authorized illustration.
JD, a San Francisco resident who declined to share his final identify out of privateness considerations, stated he helped co-found the California Inexperienced Celebration within the early Nineteen Nineties. He known as Trump “psychologically damaged” and hoped his fellow Trump opponents would decide and select their battles extra correctly with the incoming president, reasonably than continuously expressing “juvenile outrage.”
However JD stated he attended the rally principally to assist his grownup daughter, who first realized in regards to the gathering and march.
“I wanted to encourage her forward-thinking by showing up with her,” he stated.
Folks protest through the “We Fight Back; Defeat Trump’s Extreme-Right Billionaire Agenda!” protest the day earlier than Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration on the Civic Middle in San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Space Information Group)
