Candlelight Peace Walk –
….this Sunday Feb 1 at 6 pm
By Stephen Golub, Jan 30, 2026
A “Candlelight Walk for Peace and Unity” will take place Sunday, February1 at 6 pm, starting at the City Park Gazebo (at First Street, near Military West). As the informal group of Benicians organizing the event put it, in emails and online:
We’ll gather at the gazebo and stroll together down to the water and back, creating space for reflection, connection, and shared intention for peace and unity in our community.
At a time when many are feeling uncertainty and division, this walk offers a simple way to come together and remember our shared humanity.
This is a family/dog-friendly event. Electric candles are encouraged. Feel free to bring signs with your favorite peace quote.
All are welcome.
Electric candles will be available for free at the Gazebo, shortly before the walk.
We may each view the Walk in our own way. I see its inspiration as the need for our community to come together and do something positive, in the wake of the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis at the hands of federal agents.
As I contemplate the gathering, I’m also considering another message, one that went out to America a few days after Pretti’s January 24 death: Bruce Springsteen’s angry anthem, “Streets of Minneapolis.” It commemorates not just Good and Pretti, but the people of Minneapolis marching in near-zero temperatures to stand up for their neighbors and to stand against Donald Trump and his militarized occupation of their town.
Yes, occupation. It’s correctly characterized that way by virtue of the government dispatching 3,000 federal agents to a city whose police force numbers 600 and to state where a dozen police chiefs’ press conference reported “endless complaints” concerning federal officers’ behavior and “that city employees and off-duty officers had been illegally stopped on the basis of their skin color.”
Clearly, the threat is not confined to one city. As summed up by one account of the mushrooming expansion of U.S. Immigration and Enforcement (ICE):
“Trump has turned ICE into a sprawling paramilitary that roves the country at will, searches and detains noncitizens and citizens without warrants, uses force ostentatiously, operates behind masks, receives skimpy training, lies about its activities, and has been told that it enjoys ‘absolute immunity.’ He more than doubled the agency’s size in 2025, and its budget is now larger than those of all other federal law-enforcement agencies combined, and larger than the entire military budgets of all but 15 countries.” [Emphasis added.]
But don’t take my word for what this is all about. It’s about the opinions of thousands of leading principled conservatives, including one appointed by George W. Bush and who served during Trump’s first term: “I helped to establish DHS [Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a part] in 2002 and 2003 and later had the homeland security portfolio as a White House Counsel and served as General Counsel of the Department. I am enraged and embarrassed by DHS’s lawlessness, fascism, and cruelty. Impeach and remove Trump—now.”
It’s about a conservative federal judge, who was appointed to the bench by W and who clerked for a Republican judicial hero, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He’s decried the fact that ICE’s violations of nearly 100 federal judicial orders this month has been more than “some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.”
Which brings us back to Bruce and the “Streets of Minneapolis”:
Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice crying through the bloody mist
We’ll remember the names of those who died on the streets of Minneapolis
Yet, piercing that bloody mist, there’s also angry inspiration, pointing to what we can do to push back:
Their claim was self-defense, sir, just don’t believe your eyes
It’s our blood and bones and these whistles and phones against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies
Sadly, there will be plenty of opportunities to decry and combat those lies down the line.
But this evening, we walk for peace and unity on the streets of Benicia. True to the organizers’ admirable intentions, our community can come together to share our humanity in a respectful manner that even kids can participate in and appreciate.
Tonight, I’ll walk with these words from a different Springsteen song in my head and heart, and in honor of Good, Pretti and the brave people of Minneapolis:
May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love
Stephen Golub writes about democracy and politics, both in America and abroad, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country.
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