Anti-Trump rallies spring up across U.S. following presidential election results
What supporters saw as an anti-establishment candidate, tens of thousands of protesters see as an anti-immigrant, anti-women’s rights and anti-minority president-elect and they have been demonstrating around the country since Donald Trump won enough electoral votes to make him the next president of the United States.
From New York to Oregon, from Florida to Pennsylvania, from Iowa to Honolulu and beyond the protests have become a daily event. That’s true in California, where voters overwhelmingly said they were with Hillary. Secretary Clinton won 62 percent of the statewide vote compared to Trump’s 33 percent. Hundreds of high school students – most of them too young to vote – walked out of classes in Los Angeles today. FSRN’s Lena Nozizwe reports that even though the election is over, protesters say their fight has just begun.
The anti-Donald Trump signs were as diverse as the demonstrators themselves who gathered this weekend at LA City Hall – the site of protests every single day since the election results were announced.
The messaging ranged from ‘Love Trumps Hate’ to expletives. There were also numerous references to sexual assault – a clap back to a leaked audiotape of Trump on a hot mic, in which he described how grabbing a woman by the genitals was one of the perks of being a star.
Ages ranged from a cherubic two-year old with a t-shirt reading “Cuties Against Trump” to a gray-haired man still feeling the Bern and wearing a Bernie Sanders campaign t-shirt.
During the campaign, Republican president-elect Donald Trump described the electoral process as being rigged against him, but protesters here wonder if the system is rigged against voters considering that Hillary Clinton received the most votes.
“Whether it’s rigged or not, it’s a broken system and it was founded off of a lot of racist policies and history,” says Adrianna, a teacher from the Bay Area who voted for Clinton. “If we’re going to talk about people’s power and the voice of the people, and that’s what the intention is for us to vote, to vote for who we believe at least represents, to a certain extent, some of our ideals. I think the electoral college kind of defeats the purpose.”
Twenty-four-year old Kiki also voted. She says she showed up at LA City Hall with a sign because she wanted to go beyond her Facebook wall where she says she and her fellow millennials live in a social media bubble.
“Everyone that I’m friends with, they pretty much agree with each other. That made the prediction of the outcome of this election totally off base, because we’ve been living in a world where you only are surrounded by people who agree with you,” Kiki points out. “You don’t listen to people who don’t agree with you or who have different ideas. You have to go out and actually to talk to people to see. The whole time, he was bragging about how many people showed to his rallies, we ignored that and now it’s time to rally around what’s right.”
Some demonstrators are rallying behind the call of a so-called Calexit – a movement that existed before the presidential election — for the state that boasts the sixth largest economy in the world.
“My sign says ‘Secede. Join the California Independence Campaign.’ And the reason is is that we will not get electoral college reform, even though that started a few years ago after the Bush/Gore debacle, but it has gone nowhere,” says Jed Springer, who displayed his stance on the Calexit via a hand-lettered sign. “So I believe that until we put on the ballot a proposition to secede from the union, California will finally be taken seriously.”
Trump has blamed the media for the demonstrations against his Electoral College victory and describes his critics in the streets as “professional protesters.”
He’s called on President Barack Obama and Secretary Clinton to calm them. That may be a challenge. The largest protests to date have occurred after the former Democratic presidential candidate and current president made conciliatory speeches urging for a smooth transition of power.
