Statement on ICE Protests
From Los Angeles to San Francisco and across the country, people are rising up to protest ICE kidnappings and the Trump/MAGA ethnic cleansing project. I stand in solidarity with protesters defending our neighbors and communities against white supremacy and fascism.
Yesterday, over 150 protesters were arrested in San Francisco, including six children. The police response was excessive – video footage even shows a police officer using a baton to strike a protester who was simply observing. A crowd marching the streets was declared an unlawful assembly. San Franciscans were kettled and detained. The protesters, frightened and angry about the crumbling of our civil liberties, are fighting for the preservation of what is left of our country’s democracy and demanding that San Francisco act as the Sanctuary City that it claims to be.
It is unconscionable that SFPD would use violence against San Franciscans protesting to protect families from being separated. People cannot seriously be expected to stand by and do nothing while federal agents violate the law and drag people, many of them even incorrectly identified, out of their homes and into detention facilities thousands of miles away. This is state violence, plain and simple, and we have every right to resist it.
Where are top City and State leaders who claim to oppose ICE’s blatantly illegal raids and federal attacks on protesters? Why haven’t the Governor and Mayors directed local law enforcement to protect communities from illegal kidnappings by ICE and to protect protesters engaged in protected first amendment activity? Why haven’t they made it clear, publicly and unequivocally, that federal agents have a duty to disobey unlawful orders, and that if they don’t, they should be prepared to face arrests themselves?
This isn’t just an attack on those who are rounded up, it is an attack on San Francisco’s values and the values our country claims to hold. This is textbook authoritarianism. Make no mistake about it, you cannot appease this. If you are not targeted today, you will be tomorrow, as Martin Niemöller’s poem “First They Came” famously warns.
We can right this ship, but we need to act together against authoritarianism fueled by Donald Trump and sanctioned by too many elected officials across the country.
Stand in solidarity with those who are resisting this administration, in courtrooms, in universities, and in the streets. Stand in solidarity with those who have been kidnapped, their families, and those with the courage to stand up to ICE’s illegal and unconscionable reign of terror. Stand in unequivocal and unapologetic support of equal rights for all people to exist, be safe, and thrive in this country.