photo credit: Michelle Marques
Protestors gather in Santa Rosa's Courthouse Square on Saturday, January 10th, 2026.

In Sonoma County over the weekend, multiple organizations joined together to protest the fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis by ICE agents.

Protestors gathered in Santa Rosa’s Courthouse Square with homemade signs, like DeBi from Santa Rosa.

“I made some big signs that say ‘RESIST’ in the ice font,” said DeBi.

“In the ice font. Can you explain what that means?” KRCB News asked.

“So, they're big icy letters that look like they're ice and it says RESIST,” said DeBi. “And my, my family - my daughter's here with her friends and some other friends of ours and we're holding them up for everyone to see.”

DeBi and others were lined up along Third Street and waving to cars that drove by. KRCB News asked if she thinks this protest makes a difference.

“You know, when I went to the dollar store the other day to get the poster board for these signs, I pulled up and there's a sticker on the back of a sign that said, "Defend immigrants." And just seeing that made me feel like I wasn't alone,” said DeBi. “And then I know that doing acts like this makes other people not feel so alone.”

Joel Berger is one of the Sonoma County co-chairs from event organizer Democratic Socialists of America. He says they decided to switch their planned protest from Monday to Saturday, due to the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis.

“We need to make this protest known that it isn't just about what's happening with the imperialism in Venezuela, in basically having an Iraq 2.0 that we, absolutely nobody agrees with, but also everything that's happening domestically, specifically with ICE, specifically with kidnappings,” said Berger.

Another event organizer, Estelle Quintana, says it was important to host the event together with multiple groups.

“We are uniting people who feel sometimes fragmented or segmented,” said Quintana. “But to join together and it's like no, your suffering is my suffering, our suffering is your suffering.”

Quintana responded when asked whether they had faith in our local political leaders to make change.

“Some of our elected leaders have complex relationships with different kinds of hands that support them,” Quintana said. “Whether they're financial backers, which muddies the waters of what they could authentically do. Also, they have institutional forces that presses on them.”

Reverend Tovis Page of Santa Rosa’s Unitarian Universalist Congregation says she was arrested by ICE during a protest in San Francisco last month.

“Forty-four of us were arrested for blocking the entrances to the ICE building with the intent of closing it down for a day so that none of our neighbors would be kidnapped that day,” said Page.

“What did that feel like to be arrested?” asked KRCB News.

“You know, that we were treated very well,” said Page. “We did not have some of the treatment that we've seen. We also came with the disciplined, you know, intention of treating everybody with love and respect. And we sang almost the entire time - we had song leaders there and that really kept sort of the anxiety down.”

Page says they have been hosting educational sessions on what rights people have and how to react when ICE agents show up.

Meanwhile, some protesters showed up this weekend in costume, like Mary Beth and Eric Leland, dressed as chickens.

“We're from Petaluma, which is the chicken capital of the world. So, we thought we would embrace that theme, um, and come with a Cluck ICE theme,” said Mary Beth Leland. “We also both work for an organization called The Deviled Eggery, which is a play on a restaurant from the 80s called The Eggery. And when we acquired the place, we turned into The Deviled Eggery. We do a lot of social activism programming out of that organization. So, we happen to own a lot of chicken themed, um, props. So, it's pretty easy to come in costume as, as chickens and to say Cluck ICE.”

Scott from Santa Rosa says he hopes this protest leads to real change.

“I think we got to start within ourselves and, and I can only do what I can do,” said Scott. “So, I hope, I hope like the heck they do, and I'll continue to, to do my part and hopefully more people come out and join us and make a stand at the polls when we, when it's time.”

The crowd of roughly 2,500 people mostly stayed in Courthouse Square on Saturday afternoon, but did march along Third Street to B Street, and back to Courthouse Square.