San Diego, CA
One-Time Hillcrest Rally
Protect Every Voice #2 is a public rally in Hillcrest against ICE killings, kidnappings, concentration camps, federal counterterrorism targeting of transgender people and their supporters, Christian nationalism, and anti-poor discrimination within the LGBTQ+ community. The rally also supports low-income housing, LGBTQ+-friendly homeless services, and the right of poor and unhoused LGBTQ+ people to remain safe, visible, and heard in the neighborhood they call home.
Hillcrest has long been a place where LGBTQ+ people organize against erasure and exclusion. That commitment must include immigrants, transgender people, people with little money, and people experiencing homelessness. A voice does not become less valuable because its owner lacks wealth, housing, or political access.
ICE Killings, Kidnappings, and Concentration Camps
ICE terrorists kill people and kidnap people from homes, workplaces, courthouses, hospitals, schools, government appointments, and public streets. Masked kidnappers use force, refuse to identify themselves, and carry people away in unmarked vehicles while families are left without reliable information.
The people ICE kidnaps are imprisoned inside concentration camps far from their children, partners, parents, attorneys, doctors, and communities. ICE controls communication, medical access, legal access, transfers, and the conditions under which people are confined.
These government kidnappings damage entire households. Children lose caregivers, partners lose one another, employers lose workers, and families are forced to absorb legal costs, lost income, disrupted healthcare, and housing instability.
ICE terrorism reaches beyond the person taken. It teaches entire communities that an ordinary day can end with a loved one missing, imprisoned, injured, deported, or killed by the government.
LGBTQ+ Immigrants Face Connected Forms of Violence
LGBTQ+ immigrants face ICE terrorism while also confronting attacks on their identities, healthcare, relationships, and civil rights. Transgender, nonbinary, intersex, lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and other LGBTQ+ people are present in every immigrant community affected by kidnapping, imprisonment, family separation, and deportation.
Concentration-camp imprisonment can separate LGBTQ+ people from affirming doctors, medication, attorneys, partners, and chosen families. ICE terrorists and camp operators misgender people, interrupt healthcare, isolate them, and expose them to harassment and sexual violence.
Deportation can force LGBTQ+ people into places where they face criminalization, persecution, family violence, or government abuse. It also destroys the relationships and local support systems that helped keep them safe in San Diego.
Immigrant-rights organizing must include LGBTQ+ people, and LGBTQ+ advocacy must confront ICE terrorism. The same people live at the intersection of both struggles and should never be asked to divide themselves to receive support.
Federal Counterterrorism Targeting of Transgender People
The Trump administration’s 2026 U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy orders the rapid identification and “neutralization” of groups it labels “violent secular political groups” that are supposedly “anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.” It directs federal authorities to map groups, identify members, trace associations, cut off support, and use law enforcement to cripple the people and organizations it targets.
Transgender people are biologically recognized by science as a natural part of human diversity. Gender identity is real, durable, and biologically grounded. The Endocrine Society recognizes a durable biological underpinning that must be respected in healthcare and public policy.
The administration rejects that scientific reality and replaces it with the anti-transgender misinformation label “gender ideology.” That fabricated term recasts transgender existence, evidence-based healthcare, civil-rights advocacy, and support from families, doctors, attorneys, and peaceful protesters as signs of an extremist threat.
Federal authorities are being directed to investigate protected identity, speech, association, healthcare, and political participation through the machinery of counterterrorism. Using government power to map transgender people and terrorize them and their supporters into silence is government terrorism.
Hillcrest Is San Diego’s LGBTQ+ Neighborhood
Generations of LGBTQ+ people have built community in Hillcrest, organized against discrimination, found chosen family, and refused pressure to disappear. Holding Protect Every Voice #2 here connects the current rally with that history of public visibility and resistance.
Protect Every Voice held a peaceful protest near the Hillcrest Pride Flag on July 12, 2026, and the campaign was promoted during San Diego Pride 2026. The August 8 rally continues that local organizing.
Hillcrest’s history belongs to the entire LGBTQ+ community. Its meaning cannot be reserved for people who can afford the neighborhood’s current rents, property prices, businesses, or political influence.
Having a voice is not a privilege reserved for the rich. Poor and unhoused LGBTQ+ people have the same right to shape Hillcrest and speak about housing, services, public space, policing, healthcare, and neighborhood decisions as homeowners, landlords, business owners, donors, and politically connected residents.
There is no shame in safety, homeownership, or financial security. The shame lies in using those advantages to block low-income housing, oppose LGBTQ+-friendly homeless services, or remove poorer LGBTQ+ people from the neighborhood because their hardship makes wealthier residents uncomfortable.
Homelessness is a consequence of a capitalist system that makes housing, healthcare, and basic security depend on the ability to pay. People who support and benefit from that system cannot blame those harmed by it and declare the result someone else’s problem. Responsibility includes changing the policies and economic priorities that keep people without housing.
Low-income housing and LGBTQ+-friendly homeless services belong in Hillcrest. Moving people toward East Village or another part of Downtown San Diego does not solve homelessness. It removes them from familiar community support and shifts danger away from residents with more money.
Public streets and sidewalks belong to the public. Poverty does not erase anyone’s right to exist in Hillcrest, use public space, seek help, or participate in decisions affecting the neighborhood.
LGBTQ+ people who have endured hatred, prejudice, and bigotry know the damage caused by exclusion. Directing similar contempt toward poorer members of the community is a serious moral failure. Shared identity does not excuse class bigotry or the use of wealth against people with fewer resources.
Poor and unhoused LGBTQ+ people are neighbors, organizers, participants, and decision-makers within this movement. They already have voices. Wealthier people have no right to speak over them, hold circumstances outside their control against them, or decide that they no longer count.
Anyone who targets poor people should expect organized, determined, and peaceful resistance. We will defend low-income housing, LGBTQ+-friendly homeless services, public access, and the people others try to push aside. Poverty is not powerlessness. Play nice, respect every person’s humanity, and stop trying to remove people from their own community.
The federal strategy places “secular,” “anti-American,” and “radically pro-transgender” together as traits of a terrorist enemy. That language treats secular political participation and support for transgender rights as threats because both stand in the way of Christian nationalist control.
Christian nationalism uses government power to privilege one narrow form of conservative Christianity and impose its doctrine on everyone else. The Trump administration is applying federal law, executive power, civil enforcement, and counterterrorism policy to enforce religious rules about gender and public life.
The constitutional government of the United States is secular and religiously impartial. The First Amendment protects religion, nonreligion, speech, association, peaceful assembly, and the right to petition the government. Article VI prohibits religious tests for public office.
Freedom of religion includes freedom from religion imposed by the state. Transgender identity, secularism, evidence-based healthcare, peaceful protest, political association, and civil-rights advocacy cannot constitutionally be converted into terrorism indicators.
Chosen families often provide the care that relatives or institutions refuse. They help with housing, healthcare, transportation, legal support, childcare, daily safety, and the practical work of surviving a crisis.
That responsibility does not end when someone becomes poor or loses housing. Welcoming people during Pride while abandoning them during hardship empties chosen family of its meaning.
Low-income and unhoused LGBTQ+ people remain our siblings, neighbors, elders, youth, friends, and community members. Their safety and belonging are shared responsibilities, not inconveniences to relocate.
This is a public rally, and first-time protesters are welcome. Low-income LGBTQ+ people and LGBTQ+ people experiencing homelessness are especially welcome to attend, speak, organize, and help shape the movement.
Come as you are. Income and housing status do not determine whether a voice matters, and no one should be required to explain personal hardship before receiving dignity and respect.
Participation can include listening, carrying a sign, standing beside someone you trust, assisting with access, or speaking when the event structure allows it. Each person should choose the level of public visibility that feels safe.
- Check the official Protect Every Voice #2 Facebook event before traveling for organizer announcements or changes.
- Prepare for an outdoor public gathering with water, sun protection, and clothing suited to the weather.
- Keep curb ramps, crosswalks, entrances, traffic areas, and emergency access clear while respecting that public space belongs to everyone.
- Follow guidance from Kiki Tolson and people identified as event organizers.
- Treat every attendee with dignity. Do not speak over, police, remove, or make decisions for someone because they are poor or experiencing homelessness.
- Ask permission before posting a close photograph, video, name, personal story, or other identifying information.
- Attend with someone you trust when possible and agree on a meeting point in case you become separated.
Public attendance breaks isolation and gives targeted people visible support. It creates witnesses, relationships, shared knowledge, and connections that can continue after the rally ends.
Pride continues every day of the year until this constitutional crisis is resolved. Pride 365 means remaining visible, organized, peaceful, loud, and unafraid while defending people whom government officials and affluent local interests want silenced.
A rally also gives first-time protesters a way to enter local organizing and meet people who understand the issues affecting their families and communities. Collective action becomes stronger when people with different experiences can work together without being ranked by wealth or political access.
Showing up keeps Hillcrest’s public tradition of LGBTQ+ resistance active and makes clear that exclusion will be answered with peaceful organization rather than silence.
Organizers, attendees, and community members who notice an incorrect event detail, host credit, accessibility issue, or other material error are encouraged to contact Next Protest San Diego so the page can be reviewed and corrected.