Start the Presses: What a Napa protest says about journalism, truth and power

Dan Evans

Dan Evans

I walked east across the Third Street and Soscol Avenue intersection as the sun dipped low on a recent Friday afternoon, unsure of what I hoped to find or even what I might be doing there.

About 60 people were scattered at each of the four corners, the vast majority clustered in the deepening shadows of Arch & Tower. A loudspeaker played a protest-standard rotation of artists (Green Day, John Lennon, Rage Against the Machine) preaching love and venting anger.

Renee Good, a mother of three, had been shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer a few days prior in Minnesota. A quick straw poll, and the content of the signs being waved, indicated that's what brought many people out. Fewer signs were attached to then-fresh nabbing of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, reflecting the mixed emotions from the crowd: Anger that American forces had invaded the Latin American country, but relief that a brutal dictator no longer held the reins there.

There were also the increasingly familiar signs urging the release of the Epstein files and the abolishment of ICE as well as numerous upside-down American flags flapping in the light breeze. In the middle of things hung a banner urging the 86ing (i.e., throwing out) of 47 (i.e., Donald Trump). A mostly older and mostly white crowd held signs and waved to drivers honking in support, ignoring the rare catcall or middle finger.

But one sign, held by Napa resident Stewart Saunders, attracted me like a righteous magnet. One side read "Who Would Jesus Deport?" with "Who Would Jesus Shoot?" on the reverse.

"I see Christianity being hijacked," the St. Mary's Episcopal parishioner said of the reasoning behind the sign and his reason for holding it.

"If you profess to follow Jesus, your politics are pretty simple," Saunders continued, noting the day marked the fourth time he had shown up to protest on Soscol. "Treat your neighbors how you want to be treated, regardless of race, creed or color."

(A separate, nationally coordinated protest held on Tuesday at Veterans Park in downtown Napa brought out considerably more people. But there was a heaviness in that particular demonstration, it seemed, gray as the clouds above. Less noise, less passion, and more resignation than anger. Part of this was likely the timing: 2 p.m. on a workday, making it hard for working folks or students to show up. But I also sensed the rat-a-tat of crises – Greenland, Venezuela, Minnesota, ICE, falling stock prices, economic woes – may have led many to stay away for their mental health.)

To be transparent, I've looked at protests with a somewhat jaundiced eye for years. I did my undergraduate years at Berkeley, where protests and walkouts are so built into the place as to feel structural. During my time there, California voters were considering Prop. 209, which (among other provisions), advocated for the elimination of most affirmative action decisions in admissions or hiring in the University of California system.

This resulted in weeks, if not months, of protests at Cal, with Sproul Plaza looking a bit like it had Doc Brown Delorian-ed to the 1960s and the heyday of Mario Savio. For reasons I'm unlikely to ever understand, The Daily Californian (where I worked as a photographer) decided to editorialize in favor of Prop. 209, which led to a storming of its offices and most of the copies of that particular issue being flung off the sixth floor of Eshleman Hall.

Despite all the chanting, the screaming, the threats of lawsuits, the pepper spraying of students who locked themselves into the main administrative building, the proposition passed in 1996. An attempt as recently as 2020 – Prop. 16 – to repeal it also failed.

Beyond this youthful disappointment in the process (and let it be known the pains of your 20s stay with you for decades) I chose journalism as my one-and-only-true job, a profession that urged, nay demanded, that I be dispassionate and disinterested in the controversies I cover. As a result, I've just never quite known what to do about protests. Are they effective? A waste of time? Am I even allowed to have an opinion on the topic?

Things are different now. First, even if we fail to win against the creeping fascism remaking our democracy before our eyes, it's important journalists, as standard bearers of a shared reality, stand on the right side of history. And second, it's crystal clear that people are no longer OK with whataboutism or false balance in news coverage. Journalists no longer have a choice but to fight back against these Orwellian tendencies, to call out truth-bending and truth-breaking – in real time – by those in power.

There are true differences of opinion, and those should receive a full airing. But a difference in political beliefs does not give license to create different realities. Different interpretations of facts, yes, but not "alternative facts" themselves deserving of equal time.

Videos from the incident in Minnesota show the tires of Good's car were not pointed in the direction of the ICE officer when he shot her. That we know. We also know that officials and just regular people – often depending on their politics – have markedly different views of what even identical footage of that tragic moment really means. That is an opinion based on the same reality.

But (and this is important) we don't know the full facts, at least partly because (and this is undisputed) the Trump Administration is blocking Minnesota state officials from doing an independent investigation. (That is wrong.)

Will these protests, in Napa and across the country, change how the Trump administration responds? That may never be fully knowable. But democracy is not sustained by certainty; it is sustained by participation. Protest is one expression of that - imperfect, noisy and often frustrating – but rooted in the simple belief that power should be challenged when facts are obscured and accountability is denied.

Tribune Regional CA

This story was originally published January 22, 2026 at 6:02 PM.