Joshua Nunez stood at the back of the crowd gathered at one of the San Francisco airport’s departures check-points. Nunez was leaning against a pillar, possibly taking a breather, as I approached him to ask why he’d come: “I am to support my brothers and sisters of color. The ban is extremely stupid and it is hurting so many people, refugees and US citizens alike, and I am here to also fight against the wall. I am Hispanic, my parents came over here when they were children. My dad came here illegally so I know the trouble that he has gone through and he has worked hard to become a US citizen so it’s not fair to exclude all these people of color from the states,” Nunez said.
I saw Christelle Guerrier at around 10 pm. The protest had been going strong for seven hours by then and Guerrier was chanting with the crowd at one of the departures check-points but decided to stay even after the crowd had moved on to another spot. I saw her standing there alone in front of a dozens of SFPD officers wearing riot gear. She took pictures and filmed them occasionally asking questions: “Hey, where are you going?” Some shrugged others smiled and said: “We follow the crowd.”
Guerrier was having none of it: “This is California and we are calling ourselves a sanctuary city, but then cops walking by and preventing people from freely voicing their opinion about injustice.”
“It’s Donald Trump or oxygen, you decide” read her poster. Garcia Logue is pissed off about Trump’s so-called gag order on government scientists, a public communications restrictions placed on federal agencies, and the notorious “Muslim ban.”
“It’s like Trump has moved faster than any other president to move us back to a time when not many people were happy in this country. So I am here to shut it down”
Shaheen (last name withheld upon request) is a manager at tech company in Silicon Valley. He’s also Iranian-American and has family back in Iran, so the ban personally impacts him: “I came to the US six years ago and my family is back in Iran. So one of the countries that are affected by this rule is Iran, which has nothing to do with any attack or anything in the United States,” he said.
