Bay Area Mobilizes in Response to Another Trump Murder

Photos: Leon Kunstenaar

It wasn't Donald J. Trump that fired the shots that killed Alex Pretti but it is Donald J. Trump who is the murderer of those being killed by ICE. They have died trying to evade the storm troopers, they have died in the horrible concentration camps he has created, and they have died trying to exercise their legal right to record ICE violating the rights we though we had. They have been murdered by the system Trump created in order to build his White, Christian America.

Within hours after Pretti's murder, the call to protest went out to gather at 4pm at the Embarcadero plaza to protest. San Francisco and the Bay Area responded. At 3:50 pm a dozen people were there with signs and a sound system. By 4:15pm the crowd had swelled to over a thousand. San Francisco came through.

Bay Resistance, Refuse Fascism, The Party For Socialism and Liberation, and individuals with signs like "you can not kill us all", "ICE out of Everywhere", "ICE are murderers" and "When Injustice Becomes Law, Resistance Become Duty" were there. Someone wore a copy of the declaration of Independence, the national founding document that enumerated the tyrant's ever increasing abuses, leading to the final rupture between abuser and abused.

Demonstrations often take on a festive atmosphere. Not this one. People were angry. Notions of Americans' docility in the face of government abuse may have been exaggerated. Alter all, we all did learn in grade school how tyranny eventually leads to revolution.

Of course, we are still far from there but as an unhinged president morphs into a mentally diseased tyrant terrified by the next election, Trump's behavior will become ever more extreme. He is losing the support of this most devoted sycophants and might not succeed in avoiding, rigging, cancelling or undoing the 2026 mid terms. But he will try, the Republic lies in the balance.

As the emergency demonstration got under way, thousands of "right to life" marchers appeared finishing their march, also at the Embarcadero. Among those milling around and looking for their buses back to the hinterland, a few very loud fanatics were proclaiming Jesus' great love for the not yet born. As regards the already born, us former fetuses, not so much.

The protesters then gravitated to Market Street for a march which I could not stay to view because I had to catch the ferry back to Marin.

See all high resolution photos here.