When President-elect Donald Trump won his first election in 2016, unprecedented protests erupted across the Bay Area and the U.S. Upwards of 7,000 people took to the streets in Oakland on one night alone, joining demonstrators – and some rioters – from Portland to Chicago and New York City.

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This time around, the streets are quieter.

“The reactions have been fairly modest,” said Larry Gerston, a political science professor at San Jose State University. “What I’ve been hearing, anecdotally, is that people are just worn out.”

On Sunday, the eve of Trump’s second inauguration in Washington, D.C., several hundred protesters marched in downtown San Francisco to decry what they called the “billionaire agenda” that includes the repeat Republican president. Trump has tapped a slew of billionaires for cabinet posts in his administration, including Tesla and Space X executive Elon Musk and Silicon Valley venture capitalist David Sacks, who both share Bay Area professional roots.

The march Sunday followed minor anti-Trump rallies in Mountain View, Alameda and San Francisco the day before. Also on Saturday, a national march billed as the main arm of the anti-Trump resistance drew a few thousand protesters to the nation’s capital. That’s a far cry from the throng of more than 1 million people who flocked to the Women’s March in 2017.

Laura Valdéz, executive director of Mission Action, speaks during the “We Fight Back; Defeat Trump’s Extreme-Right Billionaire Agenda!” the day before Donald Trumps presidential inauguration at the Civic Center in San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group) 

But Gerston expects to see bigger street protests rock the Bay Area as Trump takes office and begins to enact his agenda. Though the incoming president made some inroads among Bay Area voters in November, the region is still deep blue, and throngs of voters still remain hostile to the Republican’s agenda. In particular: the president-elect’s promises to deport undocumented immigrants en masse, Gerston said.

“You will begin to see various interests exercise their right to protest in much larger numbers,” he said.

On Sunday, several hundred activists and organizers representing more than 60 labor unions, immigrant advocates and leftist political groups such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation gathered at Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco.

There, a series of speakers railed against the excesses of capitalism and the nation’s growing class of billionaires, while urging protesters to join organizations dedicated to protecting immigrants, fighting climate change, defending reproductive rights and more.

The organizations in question? A slew of groups including the Oakland Education Association, Bay Area Youth Climate Summit, the East Bay chapter of Democratic Socialists of America and student activists from Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley.

People protest during the “We Fight Back; Defeat Trump’s Extreme-Right Billionaire Agenda!” the day before Donald Trumps presidential inauguration at the Civic Center in San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group) 

Standing atop a stake bed truck rented from Enterprise, Lisa Eugene, an activist with the Answer Coalition, shouted into a microphone and implored rally-goers to stay involved during Trump’s second term. Activists held signs reading “People united will defend immigrants” and “The Bay Area Says No to Tech Billionaires.”

“We’re going to win only if we fight,” Eugene said to cheers. “Join an organization. That’s how you become a fighter.”

Opposition to Trump’s immigration agenda animated much of the rally Sunday, as speakers repeatedly defended undocumented immigrants as critical to the U.S. economy and worthy of dignity.

“It is on their backs that corporations make a filthy amount of wealth,” said Laura Valdéz, executive director of Mission Action, a San Francisco nonprofit that provides resources for immigrants. “Let’s not forget that.”

Jesus Moctezuma, 26, said he’s noticed widespread fear in his community in San Jose about Trump’s plans to remove undocumented immigrants. Moctezuma was born in Mexico and came to the U.S. with his family in 2006, he said. That’s the same year that immigrants and their advocates – including those in the Bay Area – marched by the millions to oppose a proposal in Congress that would have criminalized undocumented status, in one of the largest protest movements in modern U.S. history.

People protest during the “We Fight Back; Defeat Trump’s Extreme-Right Billionaire Agenda!” protest the day before Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration at the Civic Center in San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group) 

But Moctezuma has also noticed a growing resolve among immigrants to defend themselves.

“Honestly, we’re not going to take it,” he said, while standing on the outskirts of the rally. “We’ve already been through a Trump presidency. We know what it’s like and we want to fight back.”

The San Jose resident said he’s involved in a Bay Area-wide “rapid response network” to identify when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conduct raids and to track the information of people who are detained so that they can find legal representation.

JD, a San Francisco resident who declined to share his last name out of privacy concerns, said he helped co-found the California Green Party in the early 1990s. He called Trump “psychologically damaged” and hoped his fellow Trump opponents would pick and choose their battles more wisely with the incoming president, rather than constantly expressing “juvenile outrage.”

But JD said he attended the rally mostly to support his adult daughter, who first learned about the gathering and march.

“I wanted to encourage her forward-thinking by showing up with her,” he said.

People protest during the “We Fight Back; Defeat Trump’s Extreme-Right Billionaire Agenda!” protest the day before Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration at the Civic Center in San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group) 
Clara Sanchez, 6, from Berkeley, holds her peace sign while atop her father, Enrique, shoulders during the “We Fight Back; Defeat Trump’s Extreme-Right Billionaire Agenda!” protest the day before Donald Trumps presidential inauguration at the Civic Center in San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)