Faces of the Resistance: A Beautiful No Kings Day in the Neighborhood

Some No Kings protests seemed likely to be more mediagenic than the 3/28 event in Alameda. But I'd already set the tone for my day by signing on with Live Oak Unitarian to prepare food for the homeless. That tone matches my sense of the mindset in Alameda writ large — call it determined niceness. So I made it a double-header in my genial hometown; in for a penny, in for a pound.

We gathered at noon at city hall to register our objection to unhinged violence and kleptomania at home and abroad. Despite the grim context the mood was festive. Mayor Ashcraft applauded the poetry and music enthusiastically, and when she spoke, she encouraged us to keep using our democratic rights to promote change. For example, by simply voting — mail in ballots make it so easy, and you don't need postage.

Her Honor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft

She was well received. Two reasons she's popular are that Alameda is one of the few California cities to meet its new housing commitments; and that bike paths have been extended across the island. She also has points in common with Zohran Mamdani. Both are Arab-American mayors; advocate human rights for Palestinians; and receive significant Jewish support. After she spoke, I asked her honor for her impression of the event. She said she was happy to see so many people protesting constructively. 

I also talked to Brian, who wore an NRA hat and carried a big sign proclaiming "Sanctuary Cities Kill People." He hadn't come to make friends and told me that someone in the crowd had said they wished he was dead. Hmmm. He seemed relaxed in the company of those his Führer calls "radical left scum" (I object only to "scum"), and chatted amiably with me about how he sees the world (per Brian, the NRA is the country's oldest civil rights organization). We exchanged emails and agreed to enliven each others Facebook pages with some controversy.

…  …  …

The homeless meal was provided at the warming shelter run by Christ Episcopal Church on Santa Clara and Grand. For the five coldest months of the year they coordinate meals every day, and provide laundry and showers once a week. They have approximately 25 beds, and when those are filled the homeless are directed to shelters in Oakland. No one could tell me what happened to the clientele during the 7 warmer months, or whether there was a welll-worn path to permanent housing.

Christ Episcopal Social Justice Coordinator
 with homeless guy applying for disability
after a job injury

Before serving, we Unitarians received a round of applause from the clientele for our lavish spread. After serv ing, we filled our own plates and ate with the homeless. I joined a half-dozen guys, one wearing a Raiders cap. The table talk was about why that team was perennially awful, and the prevalence of brain injuries in the NFL. A transcript of the conversation wouldn't show that the speakers deserve to be despised and ignored. Note to the resistance: they're relatable; part of resistance is acknowledging that they're part of us.

Unitarians bearing food

Faces of the Resistance: Standing Together with Indivisible

 

Trump's latest wars, and the protesters gunned down on the streets of Minneapolis, mean dark times for many of us. The echo chamber effect of social media has not helped. Even in Northern California you can feel like an oddball, lost in the crowd cheering on the carnage. But good vibes can still be found, just by waving signs on the I-80 Berkeley overpass on a Sunday afternoon — along with activists from Indivisible and kindred organizations. Honks of support from passing motorists can raise blue spirits.

I speak from two recent experiences. On 2/22 I went with five others from one of the kindred groups, SF Bay Area Friends of Standing Together (SF FoST). We displayed banners promoting peace and justice in Israel-Palestine (e.g., "From Gaza to Tel Aviv, All the Children Deserve to Live," and "End the Occupation to Free us All."). We were happy to get a honk of support about every 10 seconds, but in the Mid-East the results were not stellar. 18 Palestinians have been killed on the West Bank this year, many by settlers doing Netanyahu's bidding (that's equivalent to 1,800 Americans dying, or over half of our losses on 9/11/01). Worse, over 1,000 Gazans have died every month since the "ceasefire." Meanwhile, on 2/28 Trump expressed his frustration with Iran by assassinating its leadership and bombing its oil refineries. Black rain fell on Tehran, which could foul already drastically depleted aquifers.

And so on 3/15 SF FoSt came back with a new sign, "No War." We shared the overpass with Indivisible ("The GOP should get an Oscar for Gaslighting"). There was a small but noticeable uptick in the honk rate, and in the friendliness of passing pedestrians; this war, this President, is NOT popular. 

inspireresistance & me"

One of the sign bearers was the Bay Area influencer and Indivisible activist known as "inspireresistance" on Facebook . In 2025 she turned 50, lost her job, but decided her priority was to resist Trump 2.0. In years to come, she did not want to confess that she did nothing to halt our slide into autocracy. On a personal level it was a happy choice. She says she's more resilient now, and found a new job in HR. And on a political level the No Kings protests keep growing due largely to dedicated idealists like her.

G.

Another was G., who intended to spend the day resting, but realized the best place for him to feel recharged was on the overpass. He's involved with PushBackActNow.com, a web site providing a useful compendium of local and national resistance resources.

K.

And then there is K., who makes time for SF FoST despite a demanding professional life, and the little fact that she's still recovering from a concussion. She says there is an international progressive movement that is gathering strength — including in Israel, where over 90% of Israeli Jews line up behind Netanyahu's war on Iran. Bit by bit, mind by mind, she thinks can change even there.

Finally, the beautiful outdoor setting on a crisp, clear Mediterranean spring day does wonders for ye olde morale.  From the overpass you can see a panorama of our Bay Area home: the Port of Oakland, San Francisco, Tamalpais. Across the overpass come cyclists, parents pushing strollers, geezers like me. All somehow embellished by being together a a non-virtual space; a sample of who and what we care about, and want to save from disaster.

Faces of the Resistance: Standing Together on the I-80 Berkeley pedestrian overpass

    On Sunday 2/22, from 2 - 4 pm, six of us with SF Bay Area Friends of Standing Together (SF FoST) stood on the I-80 Berkeley pedestrian overpass to display banners promoting peace and justice in Israel-Palestine. You could say that SF FoST has the dragon tamer perspective, as described in the animated feature movie "How to Tame Your Dragon’: millions of Israelis and Palestinians live in the same small corner of the world; neither wants to go somewhere else; the only livable future is a shared future, where both learn to thrive alongside their erstwhile enemies. Simple to say, but of course arriving at that future will not be easy. As a friend of SF FoST, I want to believe that it's still possible.

Sasha Cutler's T-shirt reads "Protect Muslim Rights"

    We received honks of support about every 10 seconds, and some waves from jubilant motorists. On the overpass some were not happy with us. One person hurled "Zionist" as an epithet (evidently in response to Hebrew language signage). And a passing cyclist jabbed one of us hard with a finger (likely homophobia rather than a Mid-East statement). Such unpleasantries pale in the larger wag-the-dog context, with Trump diverting attention from Epstein embarrassments by threatening Iran. As well as the context of the ongoing, underreported carnage in Israel-Palestine. But the resistance is gathering force & Trump's poll numbers are fading. We freeway “bannerdeers” encourage American Jews, who are so prominent in the fight to save and deepen American democracy, to broaden their vision to include Palestinian rights to peace and equality. As one of our signs says, "End the Occupation to Free us All".

Sasha, amoeba, and me

Standing Together is a progressive grassroots movement organizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel against the occupation and working for peace, equality, and social justice: https://www.standing-together.org/en

For SF FosT news and events: https://www.instagram.com/standing.together.sfbay/ 

And if you can, please join us March 1 in Oakland for a screening of The Other.

Of Real and Conjured Presence (flash fiction)

 There are always some in the lobby, slumped silently in wheelchairs. They perk up when the outside door opens, like flowers bending toward light. But in my entire month of in-patient fracture care, I've never seen one get an actual visit. I can relate. Instead of pretending I don't see them, I pretend I'm someone somebody's wanting to see.

And so I met Merle and Gladys, married so long they can forget how they know each other. But they always recall something about a son. I'll hold hands, and tell "mom" and "dad" about my amazing circumstances. They'll nod.

Today is special. "My girlfriend wants to say hi," I say, holding out my phone.

"What's her name?" Gladys whispers.

She would ask that. In the week we've been talking and stuff I haven't got that far. "I call her Honey," I say.

"Hello Hon!" Gladys says, with the throaty cheer of the ex-hashhouse waitress she is.

……… ……… ………

Back up in my room I'm on the edge of the bed. My honey reminds me she's not my girlfriend.

"Thanks for humoring them," I say.

"Just who do you think we are?" she asks.

Good question. She's a retired school teacher in Wheeling, West Virginia, a blue drop in a red ocean, who hits on guys she finds on Facebook. I'm a stuffy, sixtyish white guy, adrift in the brave blue world of Alameda, California; so lonely I responded to "hello handsome" with "what are you wearing?" 

"You tell me" I say.

"We're nothing at all," she says, "after tomorrow." Long pause. "Found someone."

"Someone real?", I venture.

She allows that's so. He's a lab tech at a detox center, and their chemistry reading is off the charts: unlike me, he would never plead for civility when she denounces "President Dickhead." 

Unlike Trump, I would never contest my ouster.  Her soul mate can have her.

        ……… ……… ………

Next day, Gladys wears a contented smile when I leave for my constitutional, as if she has a sweet, ultimately solitary practice too. "Tell her from me she's a lucky girl!" she calls after me.

"You were lucky to have me," I tell my phone.

"Heard," my attentive friend says. "You have an obedient streak."

"Within limits."

"Perfect," she says, "remember my limit. Today it's over."

Instead of the usual beach walk, she wants the library for our last date. Where I worked before I fell down the stairs and landed in rehab. My so cool colleagues considered me hopelessly antiquated. She knows I dread returning after I'm discharged. 

It's across Oak from the police department. I linger at the memorial for cops killed on the job, narrating for her. "The busts of Davey and Gresham are mounted on thin pedestals. 'IN VALOR THERE IS HOPE' is engraved in the pavement."

"Stop stalling!" my insistent friend says. "Show some valor yourself and cross the street." 

I obey. 

……… ……… ………

Wouldn't you know it, the first librarian I meet is Angie. I don't approve of the Goth tattoos covering her neck, wrists, and doubtless much else; semi-tolerable when she was decades younger. She is famous around town for learning to read in prison, and like everyone I'm a sucker for tales of redemption. But there are limits; nobody needs to turn pages while walking to the restroom. Plus she tells everyone her tacky motto, "So Many Books, So Little Time," and she sprinkles cliches over conversations like confetti.

"Angie!" I say, so she won't walk into me.

She lowers Kindred, mouth round with astonishment. "Roger! How you been? When you back?"

"Next week."

"Can't wait! Well, one day at a time."

……… ……… ………

Outside again, I tell it to my phone. "Evidently they don't loathe me quite as much as before."

"I heard, Roger," my fleeting friend says. "You'll do fine. Goodbye."

……… ……… ………

I stop by the hospital then return to the library after my second day back. Hooray, Angie waits outside like she said she would. I park, and we push a couple of wheelchairs to Tucker's, the cavernous ice cream parlor that's an Alameda institution. Our group settles around a window table. I fetch treats. Bliss.

There's something orgiastic about a Banana Split, the creamy sweetness that won't stop coming, the name itself encoding the essence of the canonical sex act. Merle sighs contentedly, then speaks with the gentle diffidence of the ex-motel clerk that he is. "You know, that we know, that you're not him, correct?"

"Find us our real son," Gladys says.

"Ninety percent of life is just showin' up," Angie says.

"Materializing counts as showing up," says I. 

Angie raises pierced eyebrows and smiles cautiously, like she hopes I referenced Star Trek. I shrug expansively to ward off questions, and for one, glimmering, sliver of a second, my practiced hand lightly brushes hers.

© µ 2026

Reconciliation Night at the SF JCC

 

Wednesday, April 9, 2025

Approximately 200 gathered at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center to hear Layla Alsheikh, a Palestinian, speak of her son, and Mor Ynon, an Israeli, speak of her parents. Layla and Mor are spokespersons for The Parents Circle, one of a handful of organizations in Israel that are working to build what they call a "shared society." What binds together the sharers in The Parents Circle is bereavement.

All of the quotes in the two stories below are based on notes.

………   ………    ………

Mor Ynon is based in Tel Aviv. She grew up on a kibbutz, and worked in global high-tech for 25 years, developing strategies and performance metrics. On October 7, 2023, her parents, Belha and Yaakov, were killed by Hamas. Today she serves as the Israeli co-Chair of the Parents Circle Board.

"My parents moved to a kibbutz on the border with Gaza.  The night before October, they were celebrating Succot with the family until after midnight, and then they drove home.  That was the last we saw them."

"On October 7, I woke up at 7am, turned on the TV, and learned that Hamas was in the streets.  My brothers and I kept phoning our parents, but there was no answer.  We finally got hold of a neighbor who was hiding under the staircase.  She was the one who told me that my parents were likely dead."

"In my many years at a tech company I fell into the prevalent view that the occupation can be 'managed'.  October 7 showed that we cannot manage this conflict - that we have to take this head on and end the occupation.  I left my job after 25 years at the company and joined The Parents Circle."

"In my new role I talked to a group of women who were Israeli soldiers.  After the talk, one asked whether the purpose of my talk was to persuade them to leave the Israeli army.  I said that I couldn't tell them to do this or that, but they always had a choice.  When they look at the person they are fighting, they could see them as a human beings – it is not black and white.

………   ………    ………

Layla is from a village between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. There's a twist at the end of her story. 

Layla was married in 1999 and had two children in three years. "On April 11, 2002, my 6 month-old son woke up very sick because Israeli soldiers had used tear gas in our village. The doctors in our village could not treat him, so we tried taking him to Bethlehem. But they said it was a military zone, so we tried Hebron [35 km from Bethlehem]. But Israeli soldiers kept us waiting for more than 4 hours. By the time we finally reached a hospital it was too late to save his life. Our son died for the crime of being a Palestinian. I hated all Israelis for killing him."

"For years I never talked about that day, not with my husband, not with my other children. I thought I'd learned to live with bereavement, and then a friend called to tell me about The Parents Circle. I said 'Are you crazy, you know what the Israelis did to us.'  He said 'Why did you not tell your children about what happened?' I said 'Because I don't want to lose another one, they might think to take revenge.' And he said 'Maybe this will be a good chance for you to not just save your own children, but other families too.'

"After many such calls, I agreed to go to a conference. For the first time I met Israeli families who had lost family members.  As Palestinian we just meet soldiers or settlers, and Israelis just meet workers they often do not even talk to. But now there we were, in the same situation."

"The first activity was to speak about something we endured during the conflict. For the first time I talked about my son. When I was done I started to cry. Then an Israeli woman came up to me and said 'Yes, I am a mother too, I can understand your pain. I can understand even the words you couldn't say. Yes, I hurt that the people who hurt you were my own people.'  Then she hugged me. Her simple words changed my life."

"We met 8 times after the conference. We went to a holocaust museum. We went to the site of a Palestinian village that disappeared in 1948. Not to compare suffering, not to decide who was right and who was wrong. It was to learn about each other, to understand the situation from a different point of view. We have walls of not knowing, of hatred and anger, that need to come down.'-

"I joined Parents Circle and gave lectures in Israel and Palestine, spreading the message of peace and reconciliation. It was easy to say lovely words, to think I was doing my best, that everything would turn out OK.  But at a meeting in Jerusalem, after we told our stories, a man stood up. I'd known him for three years but this was the first time I heard his story. He was a high officer in the IDF stationed in my area, and one day he prevented a Palestinian car carrying a sick child from going to the hospital."

"I couldn't cry, I couldn't even breathe. For him to be one of them was shock. We went outside the room to talk. He said that his own son became sick, and then when he tried to rush him to a hospital, the guard stopped him to ask questions  And that was when he realized what he had done to that Palestinian family. He quit the army and was jailed for it.  When he got out he joined with ex-Palestinian fighters to create Combatants for Peace, and set to work to end the occupation and to build peace."

"I told him it was hard for me to listen to his story, but that I wanted to thank him.  Because if I knew that part of him existed, but he kept it hidden, I could never forgive him.  But I could forgive him now because he spoke the truth even though it was difficult. For me, that is the real meaning of reconciliation — knowing that you mean what you say, that you acknowledge what you did."

………   ………    ………

The evening was not all about pain. Layla and Mor were introduced by a Palestinian-American (Sam)  and an Israeli ex-pat (Tal), both now San Francisco restauranteurs. They co-host weekly gathering where participants use food as a way to bridge their differences. They provided a lavish dessert spread after the meeting, which attendees devoured avidly.  Sam's recipe for Mid-East peace is "Make hummus, not walls."

Groups in Israel Working for a shared society.

• Combatants for Peace
• The Parents Circle
• Standing Together

Alameda protests Trump's assault on democracy

Hands Off Protest, Alameda, CA City Hall, 4/5/25.

About 1,500 came to participate in the nationwide

day of Trump/Musk resistance, and the crowd spilled

over onto the other sides of Santa Clara and Oak Streets.

South Bay Vigil for Gaza

While Trump dreams of building luxury resorts atop the Gaza killing fields, some go public with their conviction that Palestinians deserve human rights. About 30 of those brave souls stand on a busy South Bay street corner, 4-5:30, every Sunday. They welcome newcomers. To find out more, send email to vigil4gaza@gmail.com.

More from Michelle. Often people drive by fast and shout something at us, and every Sunday there are some confrontations. There was a pretty intense one today.  Woman just came and was yelling at us because she thought the Palestinian flag was offensive. 

More about Lucy Janjigian, at the vigil but not shown. Lucy is a noted painter, whose book, Divine Encounters: Memoirs of an Armenian Palestinian Painter from Jerusalem and Beyond is available on Amazon. Despite the displacement and suffering she has witnessed, it is clear on meeting her briefly that she loves life. 

More about journalists slaughtered in Gaza. "At least 160 journalists, translators, fixers, and others who help with news gathering have been killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. It has been the deadliest period for reporters since the organization began keeping track in 1992, and the vast majority of those killed have been Palestinian."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/record-journalist-death-toll-in-gaza-60-minutes/

Israel also suppresses Gaza news by not allowing foreign journalists into Gaza unless they are embedded with the IDF.

More about Dr. Abu Safiya.  Dr. Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan hospital in Gaza, was arrested by Israel in December (see iconic photo below). He has been allowed one visit by his attorney, and his family says he has been tortured and held in solitary confinement. https://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/12/headlines/family_says_dr_hussam_abu_safiya_was_tortured_by_israeli_captors

Dr. Safiya is famous for his commitment to his patients and his colleagues. He continued to work after his 15 year-old son Ibrahim was killed by Israel in October.  https://www.972mag.com/kamal-adwan-hospital-hussam-abu-safia/