Photo: Jonah Raskin.
They did not come to the Civic Center in San Francisco on April 5, 2025 to speak truth to power. They know that power doesn’t listen to people, not the powerful but vulnerable demigods in the White House. They came to acknowledge one another, to build a community in the open air and to air their grievances. It was a defining feature of the crowd that numbered in the thousands that no two signs were identical just as no people were identical and no two people dressed identically. They were individuals, separate and autonomous and yet linked by their total rejection of Trump and Musk whose names were deliberately misspelled in the spirit of disdain and disgust.
I wandered from the edge of the crowd opposite the main branch of the public library to the heart of the crowd where it was so crowded I couldn’t move forward or to the side and had to go backward for room to breathe. I saw T-shirts that read “Gulf of Mexico,” signs that mention Greenland and Gaza, and just one that mentioned Ukraine.
I saw the word “FUCK” in capital letters dozens of times, signs that called for Democracy with a capital D, signs that called for money and jobs, signs with the capital letter X through the Tesla icon, and the world Oligarchy with an X across it. “Defund DODGE” I read and “we the people,” and a quotation from Benjamin Franklin, and passages from Isiah and Matthew and a T-shirt that shouted “Our Revolution California.” The signs were all hand-lettered and also drawn by hand. Not a single one was store bought. This was a DIY crowd who cared not a fig about Pelosi, AOC, Waltz, Sanders or Kamala Harris. It was a crowd that didn’t have a favorite politician, though one sign read “We’re angry and we’re voting.” The protesters were not waiting for the midterm elections to express their disapproval of the whole lousy political landscape.
I was there. I felt at one with the crowd, the most diverse crowd I’ve ever experienced with men and women wearing green hats, blue hats, red hats, black hats and white hats, big and little hats, angry people but happy people, too, happy to be protesting on a Sunday in the sun in San Francisco. My favorite two signs were held by the same woman who sat on a curb. Both featured American flags. One read “Fuck Nazis” six times. The other read “We the People love Democracy, Zelensky, Ukraine,” followed by “celebrate diversity, equity and inclusion” —three words that defined the crowd itself that care about inclusivity, diversity, fairness and justice.
© Counter Punch