CULTURE
San Francisco institution hangs protest banners as federal agents are sent to Bay Area

By Andrew Chamings,
Editor-at-Large
Updated Oct 22, 2025 5:28 p.m.


City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco on Oct. 22, 2025.
Courtesy of City Lights Bookstore

The same week the Trump administration announced that federal agents were to be sent to the Bay Area, one of the city’s most cherished institutions raised banners with a message on defying authoritarianism.

On Tuesday evening, City Lights Bookstore unfurled a series of quotes across its windows on Columbus Avenue, displaying some choice lines from “Pity the Nation,” a poem by San Francisco poet and City Lights founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

The banners read in full: “Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, Whose sages are silenced and whose bigots haunt the airwaves. Pity the nation that praises conquerors and acclaims the bully as hero. Pity the people who allow their freedoms to erode and their rights to be washed away. My country tears of thee. Sweet land of liberty!”

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