Labor leaders and community organizations stood together at City Hall Thursday to discuss the threat of federal invasion of San Francisco and offer a community response plan.
Behind a “We Keep Us Safe” banner, Bianca Polovina, president of IFPTE Local 21, told us how residents of San Francisco can keep each other safe.
“It can be as simple as, ‘I’m going to sign up to adopt the corner that I live on’, whether it’s here in San Francisco County or in Alameda County,” Polovina said. “‘I’m going to take care of my neighbors, I’m going to buy extra groceries, I’m going to buy additional goods from street vendors, buy them out so that they can go home.’ They don’t have to worry about vending goods where they might have concern that ICE would be coming for them.”
In a post on Truth Social Thursday morning, President Trump said, after speaking with “friends of [his] in the area” (he name-dropped NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff, who retracted his support for deploying the National Guard to San Francisco after backlash), as well as Mayor Lurie, he has decided to “not surge San Francisco on Saturday. Stay tuned!”
The dual announcements from Trump and Mayor Lurie came while federal agents arrived in the Bay and peaceful protests outside of Coast Guard Island were declared unlawful assembly and dispersed with flash bangs.
Organizers say every day with no National Guard or ICE invasion in San Francisco is a cautious win. They are prepared for that to change at any moment, and urge every resident of San Francisco, vulnerable to immigration enforcement or not, to consider the still-looming threat (from just across the Bay Bridge) of federal presence in the city.
“This is a moment where we have to be united, and demonstrate, but also abandon all of our political bullshit on the side,” SEIU Local 87 President Olga Miranda said in the press conference organized by Bay Resistance.
If the federal government wants to help San Francisco, Polovina said: “Stop cutting public services. It’s to feed us. It’s to fund health care. It’s to invest in public services, not give away tax breaks to billionaires. That’s the way the federal government can help us, not send an invasion into the San Francisco Bay Area.”
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Sup. Jackie Fielder told the gathering:
We are not the aggressors. They are. They are the ones spewing threats to invade our communities. They are the ones threatening that they will march into our neighborhoods, onto our doorsteps. They are the ones trying to tear apart what we’ve built in San Francisco: our sanctuary, our solidarity, and yes, our safety. … They want our communities to help them enforce their racist immigration agenda. Well, I say, hell no. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever … Because we are not here for any untoward action from the community, anything an elected [official] has said—we are here because Benioff, of Salesforce, put this idea into Trump’s head.
Cassondra Curiel, president of the local teacher’s union, added:
We need to see that this city is going to protect our most beloved future, so that we in the schools can help create that future for all of us… Teaching students to have an inclusive and tolerant view of the world is what we do best. Teaching students to have a tolerant and inclusive view of the world is also a call to action to all of us to oppose, resist, and protest intolerance, bigotry, and all forms of discrimination like we are being threatened with today
Miranda noted:
If you’re not the type to go protest, help us buy groceries for somebody who needs them. If you’re not the type who wants to be able to get in front of a National Guard truck, help us fund legal representation for those that do get arrested or are detained by ICE and have no relatives, have no additional funds to be able to do that.
Fielder, along with Supervisor Connie Chan and alongside Supervisors Shamann Walton, Chyanne Chen, and Bilal Mahmood, announced legislation today “appropriating funds from the city’s general reserves towards San Francisco’s immigrant legal services and Rapid Response Network, which have been severely underfunded amidst threats by the Trump administration. Supervisor Fielder has been advocating for these funds since she took office, and voted no on Mayor Lurie’s budget, in part because it lacked these additional funds.”
From a press statement:
The Rapid Response Network is critical to keeping San Francisco immigrants safe by verifying immigration enforcement in San Francisco and connecting immigrants arrested by ICE with legal assistance and support services. Despite having no additional funds this year, the Rapid Response Line and the San Francisco Immigration Legal Defense Coalition have continued to serve‑under severe pressure and historic volume of requests—as the safety net that electeds and community leaders call on when threats of federal immigration hit the city, as they have this past week.
Lurie will have to agree to appropriate those funds.
