Building Power, Defending Our Communities

Written By Bay Rising

Over the past year, we've transformed resistance into organized, sustained action across the Bay Area. From neighborhood action pods to regional coalitions, from emergency rapid response to long-term strategic campaigns, we've built the infrastructure our communities need to defend themselves against deportations, fascism, and corporate greed. Together with our partners and hundreds of trained volunteers, we've shown up when it mattered most—at ICE offices, in our neighborhoods, at the doors of billionaires, and everywhere our people needed us. Here's what we've accomplished together:

2025 year in review

  • Built a network of over 100 organizations uniting impacted community members and workers to strategize together

  • Organized a Know Your Rights summit in San Francisco with partners, bringing together over 500 people

  • Launched a volunteer-run accompaniment program responding to requests throughout the Bay Area to support people at ICE check-ins and court appearances

  • Fought harmful budget cuts and made visible the impact of corporate tax breaks on Bay Area communities

  • Built over 150 neighborhood action pods across the region

  • Rallied in support of Los Angeles and against ICE invasions across the country

  • Mobilized to defend the Bay Area, training and mobilizing hundreds of people within 24 hours when threats emerged

  • Held distributed actions at over 70 libraries across the Bay to support neighborhood organizing and build resistance

  • Recruited hundreds of volunteers for ICE Watch patrols

  • Trained community and labor organizers on non-cooperation strategies and helped integrate them into their organizing work

  • Trained over 1,400 community members in non-cooperation strategies to defeat fascism

  • Built a rapid response alert system for emergency protests

  • Held emergency community pickets at ICE offices during high-risk periods, resulting in offices choosing not to open

  • Recruited canvassers to pass Proposition 50

  • Conducted hundreds of outreach shifts in Dublin with TUWU and the ICE Out of Dublin coalition, helping pass a city council resolution opposing the facility reopening as an ICE detention center

  • Launched Silicon Valley Resistance to expand organizing to the South Bay

  • Marched to build our resistance: May Day, June and October protests, Trans March, and repeated demonstrations against the genocide in Gaza

  • Urged local elected officials to defend and expand sanctuary policies across the Bay Area

  • Supported interfaith leaders standing up against kidnappings at ICE check-ins and courts

  • Supported boycotts of corporations and billionaires backing the MAGA regime, including Tesla, Amazon, Home Depot, and Target

  • Joined the Purge Palantir campaign with actions in Palo Alto and San Francisco, taking on tech companies that surveil communities and assist ICE

  • Brought the fight to Trump-supporting billionaires with marches to their homes in Pacific Heights

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