Feature Archives

In a relatively quick victory after protests at the jail recently ramped up, Contra Costa Sheriff David Livingston announced on July 10 that his department will cancel its contract with ICE at the end of a 120-day waiting period. Sheriff Livingston said that protests and public pressure played a role in the decision to cancel the contract.

UPDATE 7/9: Police raid Occupy ICE SF.

On July 2, "Block ICE" protesters set up a chain link and barbed wire fence in front of the main entrance to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services building in San Francisco. Later, tents went up in front of metal gates used by buses transporting detained immigrants. A core group of protesters are now staying around the clock at the encampment. A statement released by occupiers reads, "We are also standing against a system of border imperialism that makes arbitrary definitions of citizenship".

Demonstrators decrying Trump's policy of separating immigrant children from their parents were in the streets throughout the month of June. An even larger wave of protest hit on June 30, a national day of action, with rallies held locally in dozens of Northern California cities. One of the largest protests was at the West County Detention Facility in Richmond, the only ICE detention center in the Bay Area.

In a 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court’s conservative justices wrote that even considering all of President Trump’s anti-Muslim statements about the travel ban, the order should be upheld. Reaction was swift in the San Francisco Bay area; emergency protests were held San Francisco, San José, and other cities across the U.S. within hours of the announcement.

May 1, 2018, was a global day of action against Samsung as well as being International Workers Day. In the South Bay, Samsung protesters joined May Day demonstrators starting at Roosevelt Park in San José and marched to City Hall for a rally attended by members of local, national, and international unions, immigrant rights advocates, affordable housing activists, and Filipino justice campaigners, amongst others.

At the March 27 Alameda County Board of Supervisors meeting, five-plus hours of discussion ended with a decision that Urban Shield as currently constituted would end after the 2018 war games and exposition. The vote left open-ended what Alameda County’s regional disaster preparedness activities would be in future years, but the Supervisors were decisive that it would not be the Urban Shield event, which began in 2007.

Hundreds of Hondurans have fled their homes and joined the Refugee Caravan in order to seek refuge in Mexico or the U.S. They, along with their fellow caravan members, have developed a network of mutual support within the caravan to protect themselves from dangers such as extortion, robbery, murder, sexual assault, torture, and deportation without a right to seek asylum, which virtually all those who journey alone confront. On March 25, the caravan departed from Tapachula, Mexico.