OAKLAND, Calif. — On Thursday, July 17, the steps of Oakland City Hall didn’t just host a rally — they became a battle cry. Hundreds showed up for Black Power Trumps Fascism, a Black-led action organized by the Anti Police-Terror Project and more than 20 Black immigrant-led and allied groups, according to event flyers and social media announcements from organizers.
It wasn’t just a protest. It was a pulse check on movement memory — part of Good Trouble Lives On, a national day of resistance honoring the radical legacy of U.S. Rep. John Lewis and generations who refused to wait quietly for justice, according to materials from the Good Trouble Lives On campaign and rally speakers.
The rally — one of dozens held nationwide — was no vigil. It was no symbolic gesture. It was strategy. Muscle memory. Ancestral instruction.
And, as organizers emphasized in public remarks and social media posts, it was unmistakably Oakland — rooted in the city’s long history of Black resistance.
“The state is doing everything it can to disappear Black immigrants — ripping them from their families, erasing them from the headlines, and pretending their struggle isn’t ours,” said Cat Brooks, co-founder and executive director of the Anti Police-Terror Project, during a speech at the rally.
“But there is no Black liberation without Black immigrant liberation. White supremacy has worked hard to divide us, but we are building a coalition rooted in unity, strategy and Black brilliance. Ain’t nobody coming to save us but us.”
Organizers’ demands were urgent and unflinching: end the deadly police chases that turn city streets into war zones, stop ICE raids that snatch people from their homes before sunrise, and halt the criminalization of Black immigrants — whose names rarely make headlines, but whose lives hang between the lines, clinging to every word that could rewrite their fate.
These calls to action were echoed throughout the rally — in speeches, protest signage and printed flyers distributed by the Anti Police-Terror Project and its partner organizations.
In a city where public officials often speak the language of equity, organizers posed a harder question — one repeated across speeches, protest signs and spoken word performances throughout the rally: What does equity mean when your people are treated like prey, when both badge and border patrol circle like predators, sanctioned and well-fed?
The rally wasn’t a one-time demonstration, but a declaration that resistance won’t be seasonal — and that Oakland’s Black-led movement is committed for the long haul, according to multiple speakers throughout the event.
The rally didn’t offer neat conclusions — and, according to organizers, it wasn’t meant to. Its purpose was to disrupt comfort, confront complicity and signal a long-term strategy: a coordinated, Black-led effort to resist white supremacy not only in law enforcement, but in policy, surveillance, deportation systems and public narrative.
