About Us

We are San Pablo. We are not disposable.
Somos comunidad, resistencia, y futuro.
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Who We Are

Somos San Pablo is a grassroots coalition of San Pablo residents, organizers, artists, educators, youth, elders, researchers, and undocumented neighbors. We are fighting back against the violent expansion of policing, surveillance, and displacement in our city—and we’re building alternatives rooted in care, not control.

Between 2020 and 2024, community members began noticing a pattern: quiet investments in police tech, surveillance and luxary police infustruture. Since then, we’ve grown into a powerful coalition of everyday residents and we’re just getting started.

We're currently organizing to reclaim the $47 million "San Pablo Training Facility and Police Headquarters" for the people, establish real sanctuary protections, and defend our neighborhoods from hyper-surveillance. We believe safety comes from solidarity, housing, healthcare, dignity, and intentional data-informed investments that address the roots causes not symptoms.

We are rooted in San Pablo—but we are connected to broader movements across the Bay and beyond. 
Did You Know?
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San Pablo is only 2.6 square miles — yet it’s one of the most heavily surveilled cities in the entire Bay Area, ranking higher than Oakland, SF, Richmond, and Vallejo

In 2022 alone, San Pablo Police scanned 6 million+ license plates, tracking our daily movements.

🥇 #1 in ALPRs (Automated License Plate Readers) per square mile
🥈 #2 in ALPRs per 1,000 residents, ranking higher than Oakland, Richmond, and Vallejo

While most cities delete this data after 30 days, San Pablo is one of few Bay Area cities who stores it for a full year

But that’s not all...

🚨 SPPD uses over 300 surveillance cameras, ShotSpotter tech, and leading surveillance technology like Peregrine—software developed by former Palantir engineers, the same contractors behind ICE’s deportation technology
🚨 San Pablo, unlike other cities, has no surveillance ordinance—meaning no community oversight of data collection or use
🚨We are the first city in CA to receive a “beyond line of sight” drone waiver

AND, San Pablo has invested $47M into a regional training facility and police headquarters

A fourth police building in the city, including a training facility we paid for in 2019, which was paid for with a ~30 million dollar debt for 30 years, with no public vote.

Our Mission

We are building people power in San Pablo by:
  1. Halting construction of the Cop Campus and exposing the expansion of police infrastructure in our community.
  2. Establishing a Sanctuary City and a number of ordinances with real protections—not symbolic policies.
  3. Educating our neighbors about surveillance, displacement, and how public funds are being weaponized against us and taken from us.
  4. Creating tools for resistance, community defense, and collective care across San Pablo and the Bay Area.
  5. Uplifting resident leadership, local knowledge, and place-based organizing that centers San Pablo’s most impacted communities.

we will achieve this by collaborating with...

Legal aid groups defending protestors, tenants, and immigrant families

Nonprofits, churches, and Grassroots organizations fighting for racial, housing, climate, abolition, disability, gender, reproductive, health, LGBTQ+, religious justice and civil rights. 

Community Activists and Artists who provide creative work, writing, direct action, canvassing, and show up when needed.

Research & Policy advocates that track city budgets, file public records requests, consult and do research for the people.
Immigrant defense collectives and workers' rights groups resisting ICE and exploitation
Local Teachers and Students spearheading on-campus organizing, protests, peer education spaces, building liberatory classrooms & curricula.

Our Vision

We envision a San Pablo where:

  • Budgets prioritize housing, education, food, rent, and everyday community needs over luxury city staff comforts.
  • Undocumented residents know the truth about their risk for detention, surveillance, or raids in San Pablo and have intentional supports.
  • All our youth grow up in in a community grounded in love, safety, freedom, and dedicated youth spaces.
  • Public land is rooted in intentional communal discussions with the people and local Indigenous communities

    Our vision is abolitionist, anti-colonial, and deeply local. We believe in the power of our neighborhoods to build sanctuary, autonomy, and joy.

Black & Brown Unity Is Our Foundation


We believe that the fight for Black liberation and the fight for migrant justice are deeply interconnected. Over 92% of San Pablo’s population are people of color (Indigenous, Black, Latine, Asian, Pacific Islander), ~40% are “foreign-born”, 23% are non-citizens and many of us are descendants of various migrant and immigrant communities. 

Individually and our community all uniquely face disproportionate targeting by police, surveillance, and displacement.

We reject the lie that our struggles are separate.
We fight against ICE raids and police brutality.
We defend sanctuary and demand abolition.

We protect each other—from cages, from criminalization, from erasure. This is Black and Brown solidarity in practice:
Rooted in love. Committed to healing. Organized for power.
Fighting toward shared liberation—
THE HUB TEAM

 Let’s Build Together

We’re building a deeply rooted, unapologetically local resistance. And we need you. Whether you’re new to organizing or have been doing this work for decades—

Host a teach-in. Share our work. Translate materials.
Pull up to city hall. Hold a healing circle.
Bring your people. Share your gifts & resources.
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