Feature Archives

Trump’s decision to quickly phase out Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an executive order protecting young adults who were brought to the U.S. by undocumented immigrant parents as children, propelled thousands of protesters to the streets of San Francisco, San José, Santa Cruz and elsewhere in the Bay Area. The University of California sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in federal court to stop the Trump administration from rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and the California State College and Community College systems have vowed to continue supporting DACA recipients.

The National Lawyers Guild has supported free speech and assembly for all progressive and radical movements for 80 years. Recently, NLG volunteer attorneys, legal workers and clients received death threats and had their personal information publicized in retaliation for defending antifa activists. One attorney was stalked in a courthouse by a man with a swastika tattoo and a shaved head, wearing quasi-military-type attire. He then left, and shortly thereafter she received threatening messages and had to seek protection at a safe house. A group of men wearing military-like attire, and one with a swastika tattoo, was seen waiting outside Santa Rita Jail for arrestees to be released.

Tens of thousands of people hit the streets of San Francisco and Berkeley against a series of far-right rallies. Antifascist groups, labor, faith-based organizations, and a multitude of sectors mobilized to confront the far-right, showing that the autonomous power and energy that was unleashed after Charlottesville is still very much alive and is growing among the broader population. But, in the face of growing mass popular opposition not controlled or contained by the Democratic Party, through building a coalition that includes anarchists and antifascists, both the Right, Center, and liberal Left began to launch a series of attacks in the media against "antifa."

Lynda Carson wrote a piece shining light on David Duke's political donors in Northern California, publishing a second report on supporters in Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maryland, and beyond. One of those named was Roger F. Grigsby, owner and founding chef of O'mei restaurant in Santa Cruz. Within a week of the Indybay article, the restaurant shut its doors. Grigsby has responded by claiming he is a victim of a "war on whites." In Minneapolis, Clubhouse Jäger owner Julius De Roma was also called out. Employees have quit, a DJ pulled out, and the Huge Improv Theater, a tenant of De Roma's, issued a statement: "we would like to formally tell Nazis and the KKK that they can fuck straight off." Clubhouse Jägerwas closed for business as of September 1 after the entire staff quit.

White-supremacist and other fascist groups have repeatedly targeted the Bay Area in recent months, most recently announcing a weekend of provocations for August 26 in San Francisco and August 27 in Berkeley. As in Boston regarding a planned fascist rally on August 20, anti-racist organizers in the Bay Area responded with a call for massive counter-demonstrations in the streets. The planned weekend of anti-fascist resistance included Charlottesville benefit events in SF and Oakland. In the end, white nationalist organizers cancelled their own events at the last minute and the smattering of racists who did show up in both cities were promptly run off by anti-fascists.

Some have suggested that the best way to fight back against all the hate being spread around by the Trump regime, the KKK, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists, is by exposing the supporters of hate and violence, in the good old U.S.A. One place to start exposing the supporters of hate, would be to expose some of the local supporters of David Duke who reside in the Bay Area. David Duke ran for the U.S. Senate during 2016, from Mandeville, Louisiana, and lost. However, Duke had a number of campaign contributors in local cities including Walnut Creek, Martinez, Hayward, Santa Rosa, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz.

As tensions ramp up between the U.S. and North Korea, speakers at a rally in San Francisco on August 15 called for the halting of US/South Korea military exercises along the Korean Peninsula. The annual war games are scheduled to be held starting August 21 and coincide with North Korea's threat to Guam. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK/North Korea) views the joint exercises as continued acts of war, as there was never a signed peace treaty at the end of the Korean War in 1953. On August 28, in response to the United States and South Korean war games, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has launched an unarmed missile over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean.