Slushies, a Barney costume, a march from OpenAI to Anthropic: Inside SF’s anti-AI protest

Dubbed “Freeze AI on Slushy Day,” the march wound from OpenAI’s Mission Bay HQ to Anthropic and Google, with a detour to jeer at a16z.

Photography by Manuel Orbegozo

Published Jul. 11, 2026 at 6:00pm

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Outside OpenAI’s Mission Bay headquarters, a group of more than 100 people gathered on Saturday around noon with homemade signs and practiced rallying cries in front of large banners that read “QuitGPT” and “Stop The AI Race.”

The protest was billed as “Freeze AI on Slushy Day,” in a call to slow down the rapid development of artificial intelligence by Bay Area companies. The theme was a reference to the convenience store 7-Eleven’s annual free slurpee day promotion.

But the slushies that were brewing on the back of a white van were not the main draw for protesters. One person drove a couple of hours from Sacramento to join and another man drove 10 hours straight from Los Angeles to protest.

Phillip Jeffries, 68, a retired resident in The Mission, said he wanted to come out to the protest after seeing fliers on Valencia Street. He first became concerned about the development of artificial intelligence when he learned about the environmental impacts of data centers.

“If we’re gonna build something that’s smarter than we are, then how are we gonna prevent it from taking over?” Jeffries asked.

Michael Trazzi, 30, the organizer of the protest, said part of the purpose of this protest is to bring together a community of people in the Bay Area. The group also held a demonstration in March.

A slushy van served icy drinks in a nod to the date of the march, 7/11. | Source: Natallie Rocha/The Standard

Trazzi is not new to speaking up about what he sees as the risks of AI development. He said that in September he went on a hunger strike in front of the London office of Google DeepMind, the tech giant’s AI lab.

He said the message of freezing AI development speaks to his biggest concern that companies are “building an AI that is so smart that we can’t control it.”

The organizers also coordinated a bus from Berkeley to bring in participants. Rohan Prasad, 26, who used to work in AI safety research before pivoting to activism, was one of the passengers. He dressed up in a Barney the dinosaur costume, which he said was a commentary on not wanting humans to go extinct like the dinosaurs.

The signs reflected a crowd fluent in code and philosophy, with some playing for laughs and others going for existential dread. Some were playful like one with a picture of a dog on it that said “Stop the race, it’s Paw-sible.” Others evoked more doom with one sign held by a dad pushing a stroller that said “Pls Do Not Kill Me.”

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San Francisco cops, on motorcycles, in SUVs, and on foot escorted the protesters and blocked off streets as the crowd took over the road during its roughly two-hour procession. The protesters walked from OpenAI to Anthropic’s downtown headquarters and ended at Google’s San Francisco office on the Embarcadero.

OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google did not respond to a request for comment about the rally.

Between chants like, “Slam the breaks and slow the race,” the protest had the energy of a parade, underscored by music played by the St. Gabriel’s Celestial Brass Band.

San Francisco college student Fatima Hernandez, 21, who was watching from the sidewalk as protesters passed by on Fourth Street, said the march was important because the technology is impacting so many jobs. She said many of her friends are having trouble finding jobs because “pretty much every sector is being taken up by AI.”

Protesters also made a point of stopping in front of the Townsend Street office of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, a major funder of OpenAI. Trazzi, the organizer, shouted into a bullhorn, “Marc Andreessen” and the crowd shouted back “shame!” He then repeated that chant with OpenAI and Sam Altman’s name.

“That’s all, let’s keep walking,” Trazzi told the crowd before proceeding again with the march

Oakland resident Erik Leklem, 52, brought his wife and two young kids, aged 4 and 7, to the protest because of his concern for the harmful effects of AI on the job market and society more broadly.

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He works as an AI safety researcher at MATS Research, a Berkeley-based nonprofit, and said he wants to see governments globally step up to regulate the technology.

“I’m really worried about my children’s future with this technology,” he said. “I really worry about their ability to have a choice about their career or what they want to do in their life.”

AI AI Is Eating SF Anthropic Culture Embarcadero Google Mission Bay News OpenAI Protests