Photos: Hundreds in S.F. form human banner during ‘Families First' protest of Trump

San Francisco Chronicle​

3 days ago

Hundreds of people gathered at San Francisco's Ocean Beach to form a human banner Saturday morning as part of a nationwide 'Families First' day of action against the Trump administration.
As an upside-down American flag flapped in the misty San Francisco summer air, the protesters stood in straight single-file lines near the Cliff House, forming 'FAMILIA!' below letters spelling 'WE ARE.'
Children, parents and grandparents, many accompanied by dogs, protested what organizers from Indivisible SF called 'cruel cuts and attacks on our families' by President Donald Trump, including changes to social programs, food stamps and school lunches, 'all so a handful of billionaires can get tax giveaways.'
The protest took particular aim at Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the budget he recently signed into law, which cuts nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade and is expected to mean millions of Americans will lose health coverage. Protesters also decried recent raids in the Bay Area and nationwide by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
As a ukulele band played Woody Guthrie's 'This Land is Your Land' over speakers, Peter Hosey, 40, stood in a line of people forming the letter 'A' in 'FAMILIA.'
'The message today is 'We are familia,'' Hosey said. 'That certainly resonates for a lot of us when you see what ICE has been doing, deporting children, deporting mothers, putting people in camps.'
'This is not what our country should be,' added Hosey, who works in the tech industry.
The crowd, which organizers estimated as 600, then headed to the ocean, raising hands and waving to the water. Protesters then walked back and formed a circle around a large American flag as Sister Sledge's 1979 hit 'We Are Family' played over the speakers.
Micki Morales, a retired schoolteacher who lives in Cupertino, was standing in one of the human letter lines when a call went out over the speakers. They needed someone who could sing 'This Land is Your Land.' Morales didn't come to the beach expecting to sing Saturday, but has experience in choruses and decided to offer up her voice. The song took on special meaning for her in the age of Trump.
'It's almost a prayer versus a statement,' said Morales, 88. 'I don't know how we got to this position, how people could be so fooled. But here we are, and hopefully we will dig our ways out.'
Several related events were held around the Bay Area, including an afternoon rally at Snow Park in Oakland commemorating the anniversaries of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Medicaid program and the Social Security Administration. The event featured speeches from Medi-Cal recipients, health care workers, caregivers and community members.
One of the featured speakers in Oakland, Jazmine Arreola of the grassroots group Parent Voices Los Angeles, said she has fibromyalgia and is severely impacted by the federal cuts.
'How is it fair that families like mine up and down the state of California have lived our whole lives trying to move up and move forward for our kids, and we just can't?' Arreola, the mother of three children, said in a news release before the protest. 'My closest family members are on Medi-Cal: my dad and my grandparents. My daughter needs eye surgery. These cuts put our lives at risk.'
In San Jose, health care workers, patients, community leaders and educators gathered Saturday afternoon at Discovery Meadow to highlight the effect of immigration raids and corporate tax breaks on working families.
The Bay Area protests were organized by a coalition of unions, advocacy groups, faith leaders, and families. Events were also planned in San Mateo, Colma and Novato.
The 'Families First' day of action included hundreds of rallies in all 50 states, highlighted by a livestreamed mobilization in Washington, D.C. The Washington demonstration included a 60-hour vigil at the National Mall to protest cuts to federal programs benefiting families.
The events follow anti-Trump rallies that drew tens of thousands of people around the Bay Area and nationwide, including No Kings Day in June and 'Hands Off' in April.
The San Francisco protest was organized by the same people who spelled out 'No King' on Ocean Beach during the nationwide No Kings protests this year. Several drones hovered overhead to capture their latest message.
When it came to keeping the participants in orderly lines to spell their message clearly for the drones overhead, the job largely fell on Brad Newsham, 73.
Newsham, a writer and former longtime cabdriver in the city, has been organizing protests like this one since 2007. Their causes have spanned the eras, from calls to impeach President George W. Bush, to support for Occupy Wall Street and now opposition to Trump.
'This is No. 28,' Newsham said. 'This has been incredible.'
Newsham walked around the sand in a bright yellow jacket Saturday, delivering orders to the crowd via bullhorn. His injured ankle didn't hold him back.
'It's cool when you get a shot from the sky of all these people,' he said.
When a group of protesters wearing purple union shirts bunched up in a line that was supposed to be single file, Newsham whipped them into shape. 'Hey SEIU, squeeze in!' he shouted into the bullhorn. 'It makes a better picture, you can do it.'
Newsham seemed to get a kick out of it.
'It's an awesome responsibility,' he said.
The demonstrators spelled out 'FAMILIA' to protest what Newsham's co-organizer, Travis Van Brasch, called ICE's 'completely illegal, cruel, stupid, unnecessary' raids.
'We are saying it in Spanish because that's where most of the trouble is,' said Van Brasch, 72.
Warren Pederson contributed to this report.