To protest the Trump administration’s military abduction of Venezuela’s president and an ICE agent’s murder of a woman in Minnesota, Indivisible Santa Barbara is organizing a sign-filled rally for this Saturday. The protest takes place January 10 on upper State Street, between Hope Avenue and Hitchcock Way, from 10 a.m. to noon.
“What we are seeing taking place in this country at this moment in time is an assault on our democracy, our Constitution, and our human rights, and we absolutely will not sit back, ever,” said Myra Paige, a community liaison for Indivisible Santa Barbara.
Indivisible Santa Barbara, which planned the “No Kings” rally in October, is part of the national Indivisible movement, a progressive social movement founded after the 2016 presidential election.
Organizers expect at least 1,000 people to attend Saturday’s protest. The group holds weekly protests against the Trump administration but anticipates a higher turnout than usual. Trump has been widely criticized over the United States’ capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and bombing of the country’s capital, Caracas, on January 3.
“What’s happening in Venezuela isn’t just an echo of what’s happening here. I think it’s just all part of the overall plan to assault the people below our border,” said Ian Paige, another member of Indivisible Santa Barbara’s steering committee.
Only four days after the covert military operation against Venezuela, an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good in her car in Minneapolis, which has outraged people nationwide. Her death comes after nearly a year of increased arrests of immigrants. In Santa Barbara County, encounters with ICE agents have increased, with plainclothes immigration officers seen in unmarked cars, and families and individuals affected by detentions and deportations.
“We have to show nationwide that the people of the United States, the voters of the United States, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans, the people who believe in the American experiment of freedom and representative government, are not going to sit back idly and allow a private police force with no rules or ethics to go out there and blatantly murder American citizens, or to blatantly kidnap and deport people who are just here trying to make a living,” said Ian.
There will be no speeches at the protest, organizers said. Instead, participants will line the sidewalks on both sides of State Street, chanting and holding signs. Officers from the Santa Barbara Police Department will be in attendance for public safety purposes, Ian said.
