Two of about 30 demonstrators today at Mangrove and Vallombrosa avenues. Photo by Leslie Layton.
At 9 p.m. June 21 — hours after it became widely known that the United States had bombed Iranian nuclear facilities — Chico’s LeAnn Jenswold got to work.
As a founder and leader of the Re-Sisters — a group that has emerged in recent months to participate in and organize anti-Trump Administration protests — she knew what to do. It was the moment to organize a pop-up anti-war protest.
About 30 protesters gathered today at Mangrove and Vallombrosa avenues, many to protest the direct military action taken the previous day against Iran.
“I’m concerned that Trump is acting unilaterally,” said Jenswold, who was carrying a hand-scrawled sign that said: “Where’s Congress? Trump’s unchecked power/attack on Iran.”read more
Senior citizens worry about losing democracy, Constitutional rights & benefits
by Leslie Layton | Posted May 1, 2025
photo by Leslie Layton
Kathy Hume
About a month ago, Kathy Hume was one of only three people standing outside the Social Security offices in Chico protesting the Trump Administration. But today she was one of several hundred protesting cuts to Social Security infrastructure, as well as the expansion of executive power.
“He’s just a tyrant,” Hume said. “We got rid of mad King George and now it’s mad King Donald. There’s nothing he does that’s not ludicrous.” Adding that she thinks Trump is a poor speaker, Hume said, “Bigly wasn’t a word before he became president.”
Some 350 protesters lined up with anti-Trump signs today on Lassen Avenue and Cohasset Road near the north Chico offices of Social Security as thousands of people poured into the streets nationwide for anti-Trump demonstrations that had been planned for May Day, also celebrated as International Workers Day.read more
Organizers want to maintain momentum in opposing Trump Administration
by Leslie Layton | Posted April 7, 2025
photo by Leslie Layton
Chico’s April 5 “Hands Off!” event – perhaps the largest demonstration in the city’s history – drew a surprisingly large crowd of people who rallied and marched to protest the Trump Administration in concert with protests across the country.
Some signs addressed the administration’s aggressive movement to strengthen the executive branch at the cost of the courts and Congress, with statements like, “Say no to fascists.” Many signs demanded that Social Security, Medicare and public education be left intact; one said “Democracies thrive with allies,” and another, “Even the Republicans are here.”
As people left the protest around 3:30 p.m., an organizer, Laurel Yorks, handed out Chico Peace Alliance cards and asked demonstrators to stay alert for future events that will be announced online. Yorks, who was herself stunned by the turnout, noted that downtown was “encircled by people demonstrating for democracy.”
Local organizers estimated that more than 3,500 people participated on a warm Saturday, gathering in Children’s Park to hear speakers and encircling downtown between East First and Sixth streets. Streams of drivers honked in support as they passed, and protesters carried signs addressing issues from Social Security cuts to Israel’s war on Gaza.
Protesters were guided by organizers down Main Street, around City Plaza, and then back to Children’s Park via Broadway. But as they arrived at the park, the starting point, there was still a sizeable contingent awaiting its turn to make the march. Traffic monitors were stationed at each intersection and ensured that demonstrators crossed streets in an orderly fashion in smaller groups.
The protest was organized by Chico Indivisible, the Democratic Action Club (DACC), Chico Peace Alliance, the local Sustain Ukraine, and Oroville Area Resistance. It was one of some 1,300 rallies across the country, and media reports indicate 3 to 5 million people nationwide participated.
Rally speakers – as well as the demonstrators – represented a range of political perspectives that is unusual for a local protest. Speakers included Sustain Ukraine’s Denise Flores; veteran Amanda Gaylord; progressive City Councilmember Bryce Goldstein; and DACC’s Audrey Denney.
“People got a chance to stay home in their own community [to protest],” said event organizer Kate McCracken of Chico Indivisible. “It’s important to stay in your own town and raise your voice, to be able to say that something is not right. We all know it and feel it. People got the chance to peacefully express how this country is going down the wrong path.
“There were no incidents, and that’s something I’m so proud of.”
McCracken said she participated in Chico’s “first peace march” in 1968. This event, she said, was the largest protest she has seen in the city “bar none.” The next event, she said, will likely be an “empty chair town hall,” the empty chair representing the lack of town halls held by Rep. Doug LaMalfa.
Chico State political science Professor Diana Dwyre attended, and in an interview today said that events like Hands Off! help activate voters. “It’s a good way to get people energized and mobilized,” she said, adding that President Trump may not be paying much attention to the size of the protests.
“I don’t think the White House is paying attention to the numbers. However, if people who were mobilized enough to attend contact their lawmakers” that could lead to a shift in Congress, she said. Members of Congress “track very carefully” the views their constituents express, particularly if they think those voters backed them.
Yorks from Chico Peace Alliance said that if this is a burgeoning movement, it has a “long road,” but the turnout gave her hope.
“It absolutely gives me hope,” Yorks said. “The goal is to keep it up and get our democracy back. We can’t stop until immigrants and foreign students are not getting kidnapped off the street.”
When Colleen Evans stopped by the Feb. 17 “Not my Presidents Day” protest at City Plaza, she hoped to voice her opposition to the Trump Administration and find camaraderie with like-minded people.
Instead, the Chico woman, who was wearing a knee brace to protect a broken kneecap, ended up at the Enloe Medical Center emergency room with new injuries. She arrived at Enloe bloodied, sore and dazed after a disastrous fall off the sidewalk on the east side of the plaza.
Almost two weeks later, a Chico Police Department investigation has left many questions unresolved, and Evans, 70, is recovering but frustrated that her story hasn’t been told.
Evans and several witnesses said she was forcefully shoved off the sidewalk. The man who was said to have done the shoving, Danny Peters, said he was the victim and not responsible for her fall. Both their accounts differ from the account Chico PD provided.
The story as told by Evans:
Evans was walking through the plaza and saw a cardboard cutout facing Main Street. It was leaning against a lamp post, not far from where one or two pro-Trump demonstrators stood, and she was unsure to whom it belonged. She picked it up to turn it around – was it Trump or Elon Musk she wondered – in order to snap a photo.
She heard screaming. She panicked, thinking she might get caught in the middle of something. “I was healing from a broken kneecap and the last thing I wanted was [to be in the middle of] an altercation,” she says.
“Now I’m just intent on getting out of there,” Evans recalls. “I didn’t know the yelling was about me. I dropped the sign, and the next thing I know [I feel] a forceful shove. I came down on my head and face. When I came to, I didn’t know where I was. I picked my head up and there was blood.”
Enloe told her she had suffered a concussion. She received a forehead bump, a “huge contusion” on her upper lip, bruising to her neck and right arm, sore ribs and torn ligaments.
Evans says the Chico police officer who interviewed her seemed not to believe her account. “Chico PD was so adamant about me changing my story to fit their narrative,” Evans says.
In an interview shortly after the incident, Evans said the officer told her that “there’s video evidence of me attacking him and I need to recant my story.” The interviewing officer approached her in the hallway at the ER – where she lay on a gurney for seven hours after her fall – and gave her “another chance” to recant, she said. She declined; she says she told the story as she recalled it.
The story according to Peters:
Minutes after Evans’s fall, Peters said he had been pushed by a woman and “smacked on the head” with a flagpole by a second woman after Woman #1 “grabbed my cardboard cutout” of President Donald Trump and took off with it. “I don’t have a chance with these friggin’ people,” he said.
As Peters tried to retrieve the cutout, he told reporters that Evans fell from the curb.
The story according to Chico PD via the DA:
Chico PD didn’t respond to a ChicoSol request for comment and forwarded its report to Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey, who spoke with ChicoSol.
Ramsey: Evans approaches Peters and “snatches the cutout from him and walks briskly back to the other folks.” After interviewing Evans, Chico PD reviewed “surveillance video” from a camera across the street, Ramsey said. Based on that, it concluded that Peters “goes after her, and in his grabbing for his Trump cutout, his shoulder impacts her shoulder and she goes down.”
But Ramsey, noting that two witnesses told police they saw the shove, added: “There’s a bit of a dispute as to how she ends up on the ground.”
A bystander then struck Peters with her flagpole, Ramsey said. The DA has no plans at this point to press charges against anyone involved.
Anti-Trump protester Susan Dobra witnessed the entire incident and provided ChicoSol with a detailed statement by email:
Dobra: “It was a large stand-alone cutout and he had it standing a few feet to his left,” Dobra said. “She went up and took it, and it bent in half as she walked away with it. He went after her and pushed her hard from behind, taking the cutout back. It all happened very fast, but that’s what I saw from a few feet away.”
That Evans picked up the cutout without making any direct contact with Peters matches what ChicoSol was told by Evans and witnesses. No one we spoke with who said Evans was shoved seems 100% sure how quickly she dropped the cutout.
“It was so shocking when he pushed her that I didn’t track the cutout,” Dobra said. “I was focused on seeing if she was ok.”
Update: Evans told ChicoSol she feels less safe and unheard and a little more “leery” of Chico PD. “I’m really upset and I’m still in a lot of pain,” Evans said.
Reflecting on the protest, she added: “I was having a great time, it was a positive event, and I messed the whole thing up. I’m so ashamed for even touching his sign, but there wasn’t even anybody around it, and I just wanted to turn it around to take a picture.
“I’m not a thief. A cardboard cutout of Trump? That’s the last thing I’d want.”
ImmSchools: Public schools can create a safe environment
by Julian Mendoza | Posted February 12, 2025
photo by Julian Mendoza
Kassandra Ramondo (left) and Lizette Pilar
Hundreds of people gathered on Chico State’s campus Feb. 5 for a peaceful march in what was one of several recent local protests advocating for immigrant rights.
“I think it’s super important that people understand and know that immigrants do make the backbone of our country,” said Lizette Pilar, program coordinator at Chico State’s Gender & Sexuality Equity Coalition. “Especially in agriculture, a lot of our pickers are illegal immigrants or undocumented.”
Efforts are underway across the state — including passage of new laws, street protests and information sessions — to push back against the Trump Administration’s most extreme immigration measures. Downtown Los Angeles has had multiple protests including one that blocked U.S. 101 for hours. Ethnic Media Services (EMS), a a nonprofit news and communications agency, held a know-your-rights training Feb. 7 for media organizations.
One of the speakers was Amanda Alvarado-Ford, deputy directing attorney for the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area. She represents low-income immigrants who are mostly from Spanish-speaking backgrounds, and provided a series of suggestions that can help prepare communities.
“As undocumented people here in the U.S. we still are entitled to Constitutional protections,” said Alvarado-Ford. “Especially the protection to remain silent, and the protection and the right to be free from unlawful searches and seizures.”
Viridiana Carrizales, founder of ImmSchools, discussed how parents and educators can work together to mitigate fears, as well as create safe havens for schools. “I started this organization because no kid should ever be afraid of our schools,” Carrizales said.
Chico State students lead protest
Chico’s Feb. 5 protesters encountered a mostly positive reception as they walked around campus and parts of downtown. Bystanders and drivers showed their support by cheering and encouraging the crowd. Some drivers honked their horns in support of the pro-immigrant message.
“Since we are an organization that advocates for women and (the) LGBTQA community, we felt the need to stand up,” said Pilar, referring to the immigrant community.
“Say it Loud. Say it clear. Immigrants are welcome here,” protesters chanted as they made their way through campus and downtown Chico.
Their signs championed the importance of immigrants in American society and criticized U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Popular Hispanic and Mexican music as well as dance performances were an integral part of the march.
“We depend on immigrants in this country,” said Dr. Gloria Lopez, an assistant professor in the Chico State History Department. “Immigrants are ultimately human beings.”
Protecting Constitutional rights
More than 200,000 people have been arrested in the past 30 days, according to data from ICE and reported by EMS. At least 8,000 people have been deported, and ICE has been instructed to arrest at least 1,200-1,500 people per day.
Some of Alvarado-Ford’s tips include:
Have access to documents that verify that you have lived in the U.S. in a safe, secure place where you or your loved ones can access them.
Undocumented citizens who have submitted an application for asylum, U Visa, T Visa or VAWA should have a copy of their receipt.
You have the right to remain silent; don’t say anything or lie to an ICE official. Assert that right in a respectful way to avoid undue harshness from an ICE agent.
If you encounter ICE at your door, you have the right to insist upon a judicial warrant.
Chico’s Christine Moore attended the rally because she said the passage of new anti-abortion laws “needs to be stopped.”
A lunchtime “Stop the Bans” reproductive justice rally took place in Chico Tuesday as pro-choice groups nationwide called for a “Day of Action.”
“Across the country, we are seeing a rash of extreme bans on abortion and cruel attempts at taking away reproductive freedom in an all-out assault on abortion access,” states a Facebook post promoting the Chico rally, which was organized by Women on Reproductive Defense (WORD), Women’s March Chico, Trans Empowerment Project of Northern California, and other groups.
Christine Moore, one of more than 70 people attending the rally at City Plaza, said she was 1 year old when the U.S. Supreme Court made its landmark 1973 decision in favor of the right to choose whether or not to undergo an abortion, at least during the first and second trimesters. “This fight should have been over long ago,” Moore said.
One of the most extreme laws has been passed by the state of Alabama, which would make performing an abortion a felony punishable by life in prison. Even in cases of rape and incest abortion would be outlawed.
Anti-abortion activists hope one of the new laws will reach the U.S. Supreme Court and give the conservative majority a chance to overturn or roll back the 1973 ruling in favor of women’s right to choose.
