Within one week of the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota, cities and localities came out across the United States to protest against the brutality of the thugs being sent into US cities to brutalize those this Fascist Administration deems to be “illegal” immigrants, anti-fascists, or un-American. Alex Pretti became the latest casualty on January 24, 2026. President Trump, when asked if he thought Pretti was acting as an assassin, unmistakably said no. He went on, “With that being said, you know, you can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns. You just can’t.” The reporters probed further, “What about the Second Amendment, sir?” He stared intently for several seconds before responding, “We’ll work something out.”

This murder appears to mark the beginning of a new chapter in anti-fascist resistance against the Trump Administration. Many who are adamantly opposed to this Administration and its immigration policies – or perhaps pogroms – have nonetheless remained out of the fray. Something changed with Pretti’s murder. Of importance, Pretti was not the first known death to result from these fascist raids, but the eighth since July 2025 and the third since the last day of December 2025. In response to the violent, merciless, and gang-style shooting of Pretti, several ICE agents took part in, a Nationwide General Strike was called for January 30, 2026.

The strike consisted of three elements: No school. No shopping. No business as usual. The first is of particular significance for the San Francisco demonstration I attended because high school students appeared to take the first step in organizing the demonstration. Teachers and their unions also played a key role, as well as socialist and anti-fascist organizations.

The demonstration began around 1 PM on January 30 at Dolores Park in the Mission District. Most of the crowd gathered on the grass where Dolores and 19^th Street intersected. However, one may not have known those were cross streets – most, maybe all, of the surrounding signs were stickered over, reading, “Abolish ICE” for the afternoon. Homemade signs carried by demonstrators illustrated the same, uniform sentiment. The underlying ideology of the signs and attendees was more varied, however.

This is an excellent omen, to be sure. Just as it was comforting to see the young and the old, veterans and schoolteachers, white men and Black women, or students and waitresses side-by-side, so too is it comforting to see a spectrum of political beliefs standing as a united front in opposition to this fascist regime. Most, if not all, of the speakers at the start and the end of the demonstration were socialist; further, of the teachers who spoke, all were union members.

The march from Dolores Park to the Civic Center itself was incredibly peaceful. Those of us who demonstrated in San Francisco were very fortunate in this regard. The police blocked off certain roads as needed, and other demonstrators corralled the masses. People banged on marching drums; some would dance and move their bodies around rhythmically. One veteran in particular had incredibly animating energy so that I even found myself grooving to the beat for a brief moment. There was a spirit of hope that I very much needed – and that I acknowledge is not the norm around the country. I later saw images and videos of the protest our fellow Californians in Los Angeles organized. The stark contrast could not be clearer: the role the police played in the protests, perhaps most notably.

When we reached the end-point of the march, the Civic Center, speeches began once more. Organizations that helped plan or are closely involved in the Anti-ICE or Anti-Fascist Movements settled with their large banners and solicited potential members. “Street-Meat” Vendors populated the plaza, providing food for those who were hungry.

It was here, near the conclusion of the event, that I heard the most anti-capitalist speeches of the day. While they alluded to such points at Dolores, by the end of the demonstration, the speakers were leaving no room for misinterpretation: the billionaires are not our friends, and while they have the money and appearance of power, it was we at the demonstration who had the people power. They went on, adding that immigrants were not the ones responsible for lowering the wages of natural-born American workers. The wealthy elites were responsible, and Trump and his sycophantic capitalist allies benefited from the division between workers of different classes, races, or national origins.

That was the point of his xenophobic rhetoric, and ICE was meant to remove the scapegoat: “illegal” immigrants. What is clear is that this could not be more removed from reality. Many of the immigrants ICE kidnaps are here legally, some seeking asylum, and are going through the proper, legal channels. In San Francisco, as elsewhere, I have heard it reported that ICE waits outside of the Federal Immigration Courthouses to capture such legal immigrants. Such captures, that is, of lawful immigrants doing it the alleged “correct” way, make up the vast majority of ICE captures.

Now, there are, of course, bad actors among any group or class of people. This minuscule minority of immigrants, however, who are detained and deported, are being rounded up by ICE from the state prisons where these convicted criminals are serving their sentences. These would be the immigrants that fit Trump’s characterization of all immigrants; however, they are a very small amount of the overall immigrant population and are incarcerated as is.

The overtly anti-capitalist rhetoric of the speakers and organizers aside, what my friends and I found most inspiring about the demonstration was the participants and organizers themselves. I cannot stress how filled with optimism and hope I was by the fact that the first speaker was a high schooler who played a key organizational role. The other speakers stressed this as well. Beyond just them, high schoolers and other students made up a significant portion of the demonstrators. One friend I attended the march with had this to say: “It was so profoundly amazing to see young high schoolers fight for the civil rights of their classmates. I am so pumped up because of them! Education is everything. We need to desegregate schools now!”

This resistance movement, at least as it formed in San Francisco, is young and energized. This will not be the last demonstration of this kind in San Francisco, and I imagine the youth will continue to play a critical role. When I asked a friend what stuck with him from the speeches, without hesitation, he responded that one of the speakers quoted Che Guevara on the youth. My friend recited what was said to the best of his recollection: The youth aren’t the future of anything – they’re the present of everything.