Category: Civil Disobedience

By Michael Hernandez

You probably know there are programs out there intercepting electronic data to harvest global emails, chats, and browsing histories. And there are governments and agencies collecting our metadata for information including the durations of our calls, communication time stamps, and precise geolocation records. There are facial recognition networks scanning anyone and everyone in public spaces, transit hubs, and protests to match faces against immense biometric databases.

In our world — one that is increasingly resembling the totalitarian superstate of Oceania in George Orwell’s 1984 — these are just a few of the tools being used in the modern day to spy on everyday Americans. Among them in the mass-surveillance toolbox are Automatic License Plate Readers, or ALPRs. ALPRs are cameras set up along roadways, traffic lights, or mounted on police cars that capture images of license plates in real-time, convert them into text and run the images against vehicle databases to find a match.

One of the major providers of ALPR technology is Flock Safety, an American public safety tech and private-police surveillance company.

Founded in 2017 by three alumni from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a stated mission of “shaping the future of safety”, Flock began as a side-project which saw the three co-founders build their first video surveillance cameras by hand around one of the trio’s dining room tables. The trio allegedly began to focus on the project after a Dekalb County detective told one of them their product had assisted police in solving a home break-in. Then that member supposedly called the other two co-founders and told them it was time to quit their jobs.

As of 2026 Flock Safety ALPRs are reportedly being used by over 5,000 law enforcement agencies in 6,000 communities across the U.S. It is estimated flock safety cameras scan more than 20 billion cars nationwide every month. According to Flock itself, roughly 10 percent of reported crimes in the country are solved using their technology, amounting to more than  a purported 700,000 crimes a year.

Flock Safety’s network is made up of cameras, image recognition, and AI machine learning which then shares information with police departments. While advocates tout the technology as an important tool for law enforcement, ALPRs have drawn a heavy amount of backlash from the public, elected officials, and civil liberty groups citing privacy concerns.

by Ernie McCray

Say what?
Students are facing
being suspended from school
for standing up|
against ICE’s
muggings and
cold-blooded killings
of citizens?

Based on what?
Doing the right thing?

I mean if I was still a principal
of a school
and my students
decided they wanted to make a statement
about some goons
who had never heard of
or cared about the Golden Rule,
I’d be out there with them,

By Frank Gormlie

Ever since armed ICE agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis within a two week period this year, the mood of much of the country has turned against ICE and its enabler Donald Trump. Both Good and Pretti were acting objectively in protest of the masked, deadly agents terrorizing neighborhoods in the Twin Cities area.

Yet, this tragedy is not the first time armed agents shot and killed protesters in America. In early May of 1970, in the midst of college students nation-wide demonstrating against President Richard Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam war with his invasion of Cambodia, National Guard troops fired into crowds of unarmed students at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four — two were not even demonstrating; one was a ROTC cadet and another was on her way to class.

The uproar that followed these senseless killings swept across the country like a tsunami and created a debilitating crisis for the establishment, Nixon’s administration and America’s higher education system. I know. I spent five years studying what happened that May on over 700 college campuses, and wrote a book about it in 2024 — The May 1970 Rebellion.

by David Smollar / Times of San Diego / Jan. 26, 2026

The wielding of excessive force bringing chaos, injury and death across American cities by officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement makes for painful viewing when captured by social media.

American history is checkered with federal, state and local police actions carried out against advocates of labor unions, marchers for civil rights, and anti-war protesters, among many others — and it can’t be sanitized or erased by those who prefer their history viewed through rose-colored lenses.

San Diego’s past also includes major government-sanctioned violence.

In the heart of downtown, at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and E Street, the city’s worst street violence — the Free Speech Riots — emanated in 1912 from February through May when police and vigilantes violently assaulted members of the militant/anarchist labor union International Workers of the World, known as the IWW or “Wobblies.”

In January, the City Council had acted to curb public assemblies in the city of 45,000 residents at the behest of business and real estate owners. They feared an increase in the number of union members coming to San Diego to organize streetcar and construction workers — many of whom were  immigrants — and to back radical factions in the ongoing Mexican Revolution. An armed group of Wobblies supporting a radical Mexican faction had assisted in a brief capture of Tijuana, then a border town with less than 1,000 people, in spring 1911 during an initial phase of the revolution.

By Angelo Haynes

At approximately 10:00 a.m., on Friday, Jan.23,  about a dozen individuals claiming to be a coalition of community activist groups from across San Diego County converged at the front office of Mayor Todd Gloria to protest his current SDPD policies regarding cooperation with Federal ICE officers. The chief concern expressed in a demand letter brought to the scene was an immediate clarification of SDPD policy and operational directives, including the requiring of the removal of face coverings during ICE operations.

The protestors then conducted a sit-in, a classic form of non-violent civil rights protest to get the attention of Gloria after repeated attempts to schedule a meeting. Nine  protestors occupied the waiting room space and the elevator bay of the 11th floor. Multiple staffers ranging from IT contractors strode through the scrum, while arriving for work in the morning.

Protest leader Bleu Wong of SD Bike Brigade was leading the protest and had indicated that she had been in contact with Todd Gloria’s office since last summer and had yet to have an actual conversation with the mayor regarding this issue. In response to the mayor’s office’s lack of communication, this collection of activists mobilized and showed up at his office with a list of demands printed on plastic polymer board signage.

By Brad Reed / Common Dreams / Jan. 14, 2026

A broad coalition of Minneapolis labor unions and community organizations is calling for a general strike to take place next week with the goal of forcing federal immigration agents to leave their city.

According to a report by Workday Magazine, the groups announced their plans on Tuesday to create a day of “no work, no school, no shopping” on Friday, January 23.

JaNaé Bates Imari, representative of the church Camphor Memorial UMC, said that next Friday would be “a day when every single Minnesotan who loves this state—who loves the idea of truth and freedom—will refuse to work, shop, and go to school.”

“We are asking every single person, every family member, every teacher, every bus driver, every childcare worker, to come together, to be in community, to stand with one another,” Bates Imari added.

by Roberto Camacho / Times of San Diego / Dec. 3, 2025

Arturo González started his morning on Nov. 18 the same way he has most days since the beginning of last summer — patrolling the neighborhood looking for potential Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity — when he came across an unmarked vehicle similar to models commonly used by federal agents.

González, a San Diego-based social justice activist, first began documenting events during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protest when he was 17.

González is unlike many others who started community patrols as federal law agencies increased immigration enforcement. He is unaffiliated with any formal organization, a one-man shop who is well known locally for broadcasting his patrols to more than 422,000 followers on TikTok and other social media platforms.

Over the summer, González began covering protests in Los Angeles during the Trump administration’s massive surge of ICE raids there, which sparked days of protest and Trump deploying Marines and National Guard troops in response.

In the fall of 1964, over 60 years ago, the young students on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley found themselves in an untenable situation. Campus activists had set up information tables in Sproul Plaza on campus and had solicited donations for causes connected to the Civil Rights Movement. Some of them had traveled with the Freedom Riders and had worked to register African American voters in Mississippi that previous summer.  At the time, however, existing rules for fundraising for political parties was limited exclusively to the Democratic and Republican school clubs.

In mid-September, a school dean announced that existing University regulations prohibiting advocacy of political causes or candidates, outside political speakers, recruitment and fundraising by student organizations would be “strictly enforced.” Two weeks later, a graduate student sitting at one of the civil rights tables refused to show his identification to campus police and was immediately arrested and placed inside a campus police car on Sproul.

Suddenly and spontaneously hundreds of students who witnessed the arrest, surrounded the police car, sat down and refused to budge. While the graduate student sat in the backseat, student activist leaders mounted the car and began to give speeches on free speech and against political restrictions. Students remained around the car for 32 hours and at one point, there were an estimated 3,000 students blocking its movement. People used the car as a speaker’s podium and held a continuous public discussion on rights, free speech and student liberties. This continued until charges against the graduate student were dropped.

It was the first mass act of civil disobedience on an American college campus in the 1960s and was the birth of the Free Speech Movement.

Editordude: Many Americans have been affected by the mainstream media blackout of this and have been unaware of the humanitarian flotilla that was bound for Gaza. In contrast, people in Europe are totally aware of it and are protesting the Israeli military’s interceptions. 

By Alastair McCready and News Agencies / Aljazeera – English / On 3 Oct 2025

The Israeli military has dismantled an entire humanitarian flotilla seeking to break its siege on war-ravaged Gaza, arresting hundreds of activists from dozens of vessels.

Livestream video showed Israeli forces forcing their way onboard the last vessel Friday morning. The Polish-flagged Marinette, which reportedly has a crew of six, was the final boat of the Global Sumud Flotilla – once a 44-strong fleet – to be seized by Israel.

The International Committee to Break the Siege of Gaza also announced in a statement that several detainees arrested by Israeli forces had “entered an open-ended hunger strike from the moment of their detention.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry says it has already deported four Italian citizens who joined the flotilla and is preparing to deport the rest of the activists. “Israel is keen to end this procedure as quickly as possible,” the ministry said in a post on X.

By Ezra Klein / New York Times – Democratic Underground / September 7, 2025

In about three weeks, the government’s funding will run out. Democrats will face a choice: Join Republicans to fund a government that President Trump is turning into a tool of authoritarian takeover and vengeance or shut the government down.

Democrats faced a version of this choice back in March. DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, was chain-sawing its way through the government. Civil servants were being fired left and right. Government grants and payments were being choked off and reworked into tools of political power and punishment. Trump was signing executive orders demanding the investigation — I would say, the persecution — of his enemies. He had announced shocking tariffs on Mexico and Canada. We were in the muzzle velocity stage of this presidency. And Democrats seemed completely overwhelmed and outmatched.

I often heard people complain that Democrats lacked a message. What Democrats really lacked was power. They didn’t have the House or the Senate, but they did have one sliver of leverage: To fund the government, Senate Republicans needed Democratic votes. And not just one or two. They needed at least seven Democrats to reach that magic 60-vote threshold. House Democrats wanted a shutdown. But Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Senate Democrats, didn’t. He voted for the funding bill and encouraged a crucial number of his colleagues to do the same. The bill passed.

To many Democrats, this seemed insane. Some began openly calling for Schumer to resign or face a primary challenge. This was Democrats’ first real opportunity to fight back against Trump, and they had folded. What were they good for?

By Andrew Solender / Axios / July 7, 2025

At town halls in their districts and in one-on-one meetings with constituents and activists, Democratic members of Congress are facing a growing thrum of demands to break the rules, fight dirty — and not be afraid to get hurt.

Why it matters: House Democrats told Axios they see a growing anger among their base that has, in some cases, morphed into a disregard for American institutions, political traditions and even the rule of law.

“This idea that we’re going to save every norm and that we’re not going to play [Republicans’] game … I don’t think that’s resonating with voters anymore,” said one House Democrat.

Another told Axios that a “sense of fear and despair and anger” among voters “puts us in a different position where … we can’t keep following norms of decorum.”
Axios spoke to more than two dozen House Democrats for this story, with many requesting anonymity to offer candid insights about their interactions with constituents and activists.

by Mike Russo / Catalyst California – Times of San Diego / July 3, 2025

For a lot of us, this Fourth of July feels impossible to celebrate.

It’s always been complicated. The soaring ideals etched into America’s founding documents have too often come with a silent asterisk, a quiet caveat that “liberty and justice for all” didn’t really mean ALL. Generations of Black, Indigenous, immigrant and other marginalized Americans have carried that contradiction, living with both the broken promises and the undeniable contributions they have made to this country.

But this year, the gap between America’s professed values and lived reality feels more like a chasm.

Across the country, we are watching scenes that belong to an authoritarian state, not a democracy.

Masked men operating under the color of law are snatching our immigrant neighbors off the streets.

Our Supreme Court ignores executive overreach and overturns rulings that protect our rights, in seeming determination to crown the president a king.

California’s own National Guard is under federal control, with active-duty troops deployed to intimidate peaceful protesters.

Congress, by the narrowest margin, just authorized a spending bill that funds border detention camps, guts health care and lines the pockets of oligarchs and regime cronies.