Thousands Gather in San Francisco, Businesses Close as Part of Nationwide ‘ICE Out’ Protest

Bay Area residents and businesses joined in a nationwide day of action protesting the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis by immigration officers during the Trump administration’s escalating immigration crackdown.

“ICE Out” organizers in the Bay Area encouraged participants to abstain from shopping and going to school or work today as part of a “National Shutdown” in solidarity with Twin Cities residents. In San Francisco on Friday, dozens of local businesses closed their doors, students walked off school grounds and thousands of people flooded into Mission Dolores Park, where an afternoon protest gathered.

By 1 p.m., the Mission District park’s central walkway was covered by a sea of protesters waving banners, signs and a few upside-down American flags. On the sidewalks surrounding the park, people knelt over homemade posters, writing “Crush ICE” and “Abolish ICE.”

Many students from across the city joined the park protest on Friday. San Francisco Unified School District, which said it expected wide student participation, said it granted excused absences for students who notified schools ahead of time. In San José and the East Bay, hundreds more students stayed home from school or participated in similar actions.

Yajaira Cuapio, a San Francisco educator, said the message of the protest was clear: “We want ICE out, we want the ICE terror to end.”

Friday’s protest, which has also been described as a general strike, comes after a similar effort last week in Minneapolis. Local organizers and residents aimed to bring economic activity to a halt for a day as a show of broad opposition to the surge of enforcement that has enveloped the Twin Cities, and led to thousands of arrests of immigrants — many of whom have no criminal records.

In recent weeks, immigration officials conducted raids targeting Somali-owned businesses and near schools, detained children as young as two, and fatally shot two protesting U.S. citizens. The deaths of Pretti and Good sparked new waves of demonstrations and prompted public outcry from officials and advocates across the country.

“Last Friday, tens of thousands of people taking to the streets and disrupting the economy, with huge support from the local community and even some segments of the business community, seemed to have an immediate effect,” said John Logan, a professor of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State. “It emboldened politicians in the Democratic Party and even some Republicans. It emboldened national labor leaders to speak out against what had been happening in Minneapolis.”

Some Republican lawmakers have begun to break with the Trump administration over its “surges” in U.S. cities, targeting Minneapolis, Portland, Los Angeles, Washington and Chicago since the summer.

Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Thom Tillis (R–North Carolina) both publicly called for Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s ouster.

Murkowski wrote on social media: “The tragedy and chaos the country is witnessing in Minneapolis is shocking. ICE agents do not have carte blanche in carrying out their duties.”

General strikes are infrequently organized in the U.S., because they’re difficult to coordinate, according to Bill Gould, a professor emeritus at Stanford Law. In 1934, 150,000 workers in San Francisco went on strike for four days after police shot into a crowd of picketing workers, killing three and injuring more than 100.

The following year, the National Labor Relations Act passed, guaranteeing private sector workers the right to unionize and creating the National Labor Relations Board.

Gould said that such a protest on the national level, though, is relatively unprecedented. He said if it manages to draw wide involvement, Friday’s action could be “pioneering.”

“It is very unusual, and I think it reflects a sense of outrage that so many in the public feel about the behavior of ICE in dealing with what, for the most part, are peaceful protests,” he said. “The very violent and, as we can see, homicidal conduct of ICE in some circumstances — I think there is a general sense of outrage throughout the country about this.”

Gould said that the national shutdown aims to get the attention of the business community and political leaders.

“If it affects business substantially, business, in turn, will turn to political leaders seeking to get those political leaders to reform what workers are grieving about,” Gould said.

Many Bay Area union chapters told KQED they weren’t formally organizing actions in line with Friday’s strike, but some members may be participating in an individual capacity.

The California Faculty Association, which represents educators at California State University campuses, wrote on social media: “We encourage all of our members to show support however and wherever they can. We must band together with Minnesota by forcefully condemning and putting an end to ICE’s reign of terror.”

Troy Goode attended the Dolores Park protest with his middle-school-aged daughter.

“I’ll be honest, while I’m very supportive of the movement here, I probably wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t for my daughter,” he told KQED. “I really appreciate all these kids who are helping active not only themselves for the first time politically but also helping activate some of us that might’ve needed an extra boost to get off the couch.”

Meanwhile, at least 70 local coffee shops, restaurants and businesses have shut their doors or vowed solidarity with the action, according to a growing list compiled by Mission Local.

“We are closed because, as a group and as a store, that feels like the clearest way to communicate our support with Minnesota and the way that we feel that we need to engage with the crisis that we’re all living through right now,” said Camden Emery, the co-owner and lead buyer for Booksmith bookstore in the Upper Haight neighborhood.

“So much of how we’re living right now is existing in a state where individual actors feel powerless against authoritarianism, against the state and to be able to show up in the street literally to see other people standing beside you is incredibly powerful,” he continued. “The function of the strike in that sense is to build solidarity, provide hope, provide more of a sense that we might find our way out of this thing.”

San Francisco-based Andytown Coffee Roasters confirmed on social media that several of its locations in the city and Menlo Park are closed.

“Andytown is immigrant-founded, we support our team’s First Amendment rights, and we only like ice when it is in our Snowy Plovers,” the company wrote on social media, referring to their signature iced-coffee drink.

Some restaurants and stores that say they cannot afford to close, or have chosen to remain open because their employees need the work, said they’ll be donating proceeds to immigration nonprofits, and are offering free or discounted goods and gathering spaces to protestors.

Green Apple Books in the Richmond District said it would remain open and hand out whistles to people headed to the protest. The store said on social media that profits made on Friday would go to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.

“We are keeping our doors open to serve as a place of engagement, whether that be solitary, meditative engagement with a book, or engaging with booksellers and fellow neighbors about our cultural moment and ICE violence in Minnesota and beyond,” the store wrote.

City Lights Bookstore in North Beach closed and urged people to protest.

“Hope to see you in the streets,” the store wrote on social media.