California News

On December 16, over 100 people from Bay Area faith communities shut down ICE’s San Francisco Field Office at 630 Sansome Street, chaining themselves across the two main entrances to stop ICE from kidnapping community members at their immigration check-ins. 630 Sansome also serves as ICE’s regional headquarters. Between Jan. 20 and June 26, 2,123 people were kidnapped by ICE in what they call the San Francisco "Area of Responsibility."

CrimethInc., subMedia and the Coordinadora Anarquista Tejiendo Libertad have prepared MERCENARIES, a video and poster campaign to counter ICE recruitment. They ask, "Please help us circulate these everywhere that people are at risk ... While Trump’s henchmen falsely claim that ICE is targeting 'criminals,' the real wrongdoers are those who are willing to do harm to their neighbors in return for a bribe."

On November 13, over one thousand union baristas launched a “Red Cup Rebellion” unfair labor practice strike protesting Starbucks’ union busting and failure to finalize a fair union contract. The open-ended strike begins with 65 stores across 40+ cities and comes after six months of Starbucks refusing to offer new proposals to address workers’ demands for better staffing, higher pay, and resolution of hundreds of unfair labor practice charges.

On October 24, youth from 50 middle schools, high schools, and colleges in California walked out of class in a coordinated statewide action demanding that oil and gas corporations be held financially accountable for the damage caused by their pollution. Students called on lawmakers to pass the Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act, SB 684/AB 1243. While not passed this legislative session, students and climate advocates are working to pass it next year.

Pesticides continue to be pervasive in the air throughout California’s agricultural regions, according to the 2023 Air Monitoring Network Report released in September by the Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR). Weekly samples collected at DPR’s four air monitors detected 19 different pesticides at trace or quantifiable levels and 8 pesticides at quantifiable levels, with 80% of samples including at least one pesticide detection.

After days of Donald Trump threatening to deploy the National Guard to San Francisco, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents began massing at Coast Guard Island in Alameda on October 23. Residents across the Bay Area responded that same day by organizing emergency rallies. At Coast Guard Island, authorities used at least one flash bang grenade on demonstrators. Shortly after the confrontation, Trump walked back his troop threat.

Events were organized across northern California to commemorate two years of resistance to the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Calls were widely made for an end to the forced starvation of the Gazan population, and for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. In Oakland, community members marched to demand an arms embargo; at UC Berkeley, students organized a mass walkout; in Petaluma, activists conducted their long-time weekly picket.

The SF Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations is calling on the University of California, San Francisco to reinstate professor of medicine Dr. Rupa Marya and publicly affirm that it will safeguard academic freedom and free speech. Dr. Marya was terminated from UCSF in May 2025, which came after her medical privileges were suspended in September 2024 over social media posts in which she criticized Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Big Oil won a major victory on September 13 when the California Legislature passed Governor Gavin Newsom’s bill, S.B. 237, as part of a controversial “climate” package that greenlights tens of thousands of new oil and gas drilling permits in Kern County over the next decade with no further environmental review. The bill passed as a last minute “gut and amend” measure at the end of the legislative session, truncating public participation.

On September 24, Bay Area poets and other writers organized a poetry reading outside of U.S. Senator Adam Schiff's office in San Francisco, calling on him and Senator Alex Padilla to support the Block the Bombs legislation, and to defend freedom of the press and protect Palestinian journalists. Arts activist David Solnit transformed the building's plaza into a mini auditorium with rows of folding chairs, and using the corporate offices as a background.

The Amah Mutsun Land Trust has announced that by the end of 2025 they will acquire a 50-acre property near the intersection of Highways 129 and 101 in San Juan Bautista, marking the first time the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band has regained full access rights to land in its traditional territory since their forced removal over 225 years ago. The property has been renamed tooromakma hinse nii, which means “bobcats wander here”.