Racial Justice News

On December 20, the San Francisco Regional Tibetan Youth Congress held a demonstration in front of the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco over illegal gold-mining operations in Sershul, Eastern Tibet, and the subsequent arrests of more than 80 innocent Tibetans in the region. According to reports, the gold-mining operations were being undertaken in Serkhok, a traditional grazing site in the region.

On September 10, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was fatally shot by a sniper while speaking in Utah. The event was the first stop of TPUSA's "American Comeback Tour." On November 10, Turning Point concluded their tour at UC Berkeley. The campus was locked down beforehand by a phalanx of riot police. Despite the show of force, hundreds of demonstrators turned out to denounce TPUSA. Several arrests were made.

On Halloween, San Francisco’s queer community marched down Market Street to the U.S. Immigration Court on Montgomery Street to counter tyranny with costumes and protest. The Halloween event first assembled at the Powell Street cable car turnaround, where banners were unfurled that read, "Queers for Open Borders" and "Fags, Dykes, We All Hate ICE." When the march arrived at the courthouse, the building was renamed the “ICE Abduction Center.”

In February 1975, construction work on Lee Road in Watsonville desecrated an Ohlone burial site, and bones and artifacts were removed by archeologists. When initial efforts failed to protect the sacred site, the cemetery was occupied by a group of armed local Native families, activists, and members of the American Indian Movement. John Malkin speaks with Patrick Yana-Hea Orozco, who played a critical role in the direct action at Wounded Lee.

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.

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”.