One more rally gets cancelled to prevent mayhem

My friends in and outside of America last week kept bombarding me with safety reminders to stay vigilant because there was going to be a right-wing Patriot Prayer rally on Aug 26 in San Francisco.

With a permit issued for the Patriot Prayer — an Oregon-based organization led by founder Joey Gibson — event in the city's Crissy Field, four other groups also got rally permits which enabled them to protest at the same park.

"I hope you know that Gibson's other events have attracted white supremacists and caused a string of violent confrontations among demonstrators on both sides," wrote a friend from New York in a worrisome email. "Stay indoors this Saturday as you won't want to see bloodshed."

Of course, I didn't. Actually nobody wants to see San Francisco, the cradle of the 1960s free speech movement and a city which cherishes its core values of diversity, acceptance and compassion, be tarnished by violent clashes and hatred.

In fact, the elected officials raised concerns that Patriot Prayer would lure hate speech and potential violence and trigger a riot similar to the Aug 12 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which brought hundreds of white supremacists to the small town to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and resulted in the death of a 32-year-old woman and numerous injuries.

Earlier in the week, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee joined by US Representative Nancy Pelosi denounced the planned rally as a "white supremacist" event.

Addressing a group of people on Friday who gathered in front of City Hall to protest the Patriot Prayer rally, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said, "You all know that some people are coming in tomorrow to our city — you know as well as I do that they have a message that we don't believe in, a message of hate. But San Francisco is a city of love and compassion, and we will always lead with love and compassion."

The crowd responded to Lee by waving signs reading "Rise against Hate" and "Love Wins."

San Francisco has been paying a hefty price for its pride in acceptance and compassion. The family of Kate Steinle, who was shot dead by illegal immigrant Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez on July 1, 2015 on the Embarcadero waterfront, can't sue San Francisco because of its "sanctuary city" laws. López-Sánchez, a Mexican national, had been deported five times and had seven felony convictions for drug possession and illegal reentry.

In March, 2015, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ordered that López-Sánchez be detained on the grounds of a 20-year-old outstanding marijuana possession charge, but San Francisco's policy of only cooperating with ICE officials on immigrants who face an active warrant for arrest meant that the drug charge was simply ignored.

In 1989, San Francisco passed the City and County of Refuge ordinance which "prohibits city employees from helping federal immigration enforcement efforts unless compelled by court order or state law."

Nearly three decades on, San Francisco is among 20 metropolitan regions with large populations of undocumented residents in the US. An estimated 240,000 undocumented residents, or 5.3 percent of the region's total population, live in San Francisco, Oakland and Hayward, according to the Pew Research Center.

Steinle's death caused a nation-wide uproar. Many who opposed sanctuary cities argued that Steinle's death could have been prevented if San Francisco officials had executed ICE's deportation order. Donald Trump cited Steinle's case during his presidential campaign, arguing the old immigration policy was problematic.

Has San Francisco gone too far along the way of so-called diversity and compassion?

I don't know. I also don't know how to answer my friend from Beijing when I showed him around the city's downtown. "Is that stench of urine?" he asked as we strolled along busy Market Street, where throngs of panhandlers look for prey.

What has gone wrong?

On Friday, Gibson announced that the Saturday Patriot Prayer rally was cancelled. "Right now, we had to cancel the rally," he told reporters. "It was the best thing to do for the city… because the way it was set up is that a lot of innocent people are going to get hurt."

In response, Ed Lee said, "If people want to have the stage in San Francisco, they better have a message that contributes to people's lives rather than find ways to hurt them. That's why certain voices found it very difficult to have their voices heard today."

All clear for now.

Contact the writer at junechang@chinadailyusa.com.