Suzanne Potter, producer/reporter, California News Service, a bureau of Public News Service.
This weekend, a new coalition called “We Are California” is holding meetings up and down the state, preparing to resist what it sees as anticipated attacks from the incoming Trump administration.
Hundreds of nonprofits have joined the coalition, which promotes inclusion, community, and democratic norms.
Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, explained the coalition’s purpose.
“What are we bracing for? Exactly what Donald Trump said he was going to do: mass deportations, family separation, worksite raids,” Salas explained. “These are all things that he has done in the past. But what we’re expecting and what we’re bracing for is a scale of attack on our community that is unprecedented.”
The coalition hopes by banding together, its members can fight any erosion of civil rights for LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, and others. This weekend’s gatherings will occur online and in person in the Bay Area, Fresno, Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego.
Salas pointed out California has also put limits on how new immigration detention centers can be built.
“We can also model what it means to resist, but what it means to defy,” Salas emphasized. “Because I think last time, we resisted. This time around, it’s really about putting in place everything that interrupts this agenda.”
In 2017, lawmakers passed the California Values Act, which states that no state or local resources can be used to assist federal immigration enforcement and declares schools, hospitals, and courthouses safe spaces. The California Trust Act also states that jails should not hold people with low-level, nonviolent offenses past their initial detention period solely to give the feds time to initiate deportation proceedings.
