Anti-Trump Protests Bring Thousands to San Francisco

A weekend of resistance drew thousands of activists to downtown San Francisco. Stand Up for Science kicked things off Friday afternoon with the Women’s March gathering the following day. Overlapping rallies outside the Van Ness Tesla dealership, this weekend’s protests proved SF’s counterculture roots are still very much alive. Each demonstration had this in common: its firmly anti-Trump, anti-Elon, anti-anti-humanitarian stance. 

“Abortion, Elon Musk, educational rights and trans rights, LGBTQ rights, climate change—all of these things, I am standing up for what I believe in,” said one protestor. 

Friday: Stand Up For Science

Millions gathered at rallies nationwide on Friday to protest waves of devastating cuts and layoffs issued by Trump’s administration. As Trump unforgivingly carves up cabinets, state departments and federally funded universities, the list of axed vital agencies grows longer. The Department of Health & Human Services, which oversees the FDA, CDC, NIH, Medicare and Medicaid, is on it. So are NOAA, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Department of Education and so many more. Even the National Weather Service is on the chopping block. 

Stand Up For Science posed an important question: Where would we be without science?

I have my suspicions. Without the sciences, urgency to regulate all involved markets flatlines. It becomes much easier to mine, frack, fast-track and overwork certain industries without barriers of consequence. How many planes have tumbled from the sky since Trump’s layoffs took effect? 

The illegitimate installation of Elon Musk feels especially concerning. That he’s dangerously unqualified is just the start. Trump doesn’t seem to be keeping an eye on the historically destructive plutocrat, or worse, it’s exactly what he’s counting on. If Musk’s bloody gutting of Twitter is any indication, a horrible fate awaits the agencies under his baseless jurisdiction. 

“Part of what Stand Up for Science [seeks to do] is to just remind people how much we all depend on science and how much good it brings to our lives,” said UC Berkeley Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology Dr. Abby Dernburg. “All of that depends on massive investment in research. It doesn’t just happen by itself.”

Saturday: Women’s March

What started as a protest evolved into a full-fledged movement that sent seismic waves through the patriarchal structures we inhabit. Its quick evolution provided evidence of an epidemic about which every woman knew about but few men were aware. Saturday’s gathering at Union Square marks the fifth official Women’s March. “They Heard Our Voice in 2017, Heard Our Vote in 2018, [then there was] Truth to Power in 2019, Together We Rise in 2020, and now we fight to Protect Our Rights!”

The Women’s March became international because women’s rights have always been a human rights issue. Few men acknowledge and respect that less than Elon Musk and Donald Trump. It makes sense women around the world would protest them and all men like them. The march of 2017 drew an estimated 3–5 million people at over 400 rallies in the United States. It was, at the time, the largest single-day protest in our nation’s history. And yet, over a century after women’s suffrage in America, they are still fighting for their agency and autonomy. 

“We’re at risk of losing every right that we have come up with in [the] last how many years, Roe v. Wade was sold right,” Shaye Starkey of San Francisco told NBC7. 

Moreover, the Women’s March is a message to those who would rather betray their fellows. We don’t need infighters dissolving us from within. So either you stand with us or get out of our way. And we don’t need people actively working to reverse the progress made in securing a woman’s autonomy. Is there a term like Uncle Tom, but for rude white women? 

A learning experience for the next generation of protestors

This past weekend’s protests presented young demonstrators a safe opportunity to learn how a rally functions and how to march. By comparison, my first protest was the General Strike during Occupy Oakland, which was met with extreme police resistance. It’s how I learned milk isn’t the solution to getting teargassed or pepper-sprayed and that cops protect property, not people. It’s a better story for Stand Up for Science and Women’s March participants, but police presence is always a threat. 

64-year-old artist and ceramicist Julia Ledyard told the SF Chronicle that she walked in the 2017 Women’s March. That era didn’t feel as “scary, hopeless and real as it is now.” 

It is imperative that young adults get involved in community defense. Collective action connects disparate groups over shared injustice and the quickest way to verify that is by joining a protest. Once the privilege shielding that rally is compromised and police start committing their assaults, you see the world as it is when you aren’t looking. That will galvanize upcoming generations. 

The youngest generations are looking to recent history for examples of how to build a future. “If those movements are in the past, then this movement will eventually be in the past because, if we keep fighting, we will get through it.” —Grey Vasconcelos, 17, San Francisco. 

“I think I have a lot of hope for the future,” said Lila Raj, her friend. “All of us do, especially with our generation. I have faith that we have a stake in the future and we care enough to make that change that we want to see.”