Anti-Trump demonstrators say nationwide protests are ‘just a taste of things to come’
They’re angry. They’re afraid. They’re upset that Donald Trump is going to be their next president.
But many of the protesters who took to the streets in cities across the country over the past week didn’t cast a ballot for the candidate who could have beaten him.
Instead of voting for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, dozens of protesters in cities from Philadelphia to Portland, Ore., said in interviews this week that they had cast ballots for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, wrote in Sen. Bernie Sanders or, in some cases, failed to vote at all. The NBC affiliate in Portland found that of more than 100 protesters arrested there last week, more than half did not vote in the state. (Clinton still won Oregon, along with most of the other states where the biggest protests have erupted.)
So rather than protesting Clinton’s loss, people have cited more varied reasons for joining the protests. In addition to voicing opposition to Trump, they say they are expressing anger with the entire political system and their desire to force dramatic change on a host of social and economic fronts.
“The protesting Trump has to do with the emotion that we’re all feeling,” said Ashley Ember, 27, who said she wrote Sanders on her ballot in Philadelphia. If Clinton had won, Ember said, she would have protested that, too.
Lamon Reccord, 17, Chicago
Lamon Reccord was too young to vote in this year’s election, but that didn’t stop him from protesting.
Reccord, who is black and grew up on Chicago’s South Side, has been involved in voter registration drives and political activism since he was in middle school. If he could have voted, he said he probably would have chosen Stein, who he said he’s “more sold on.” But Reccord said he would still rather see Clinton in office than Trump, a man who, Reccord said, “promotes racism.”
Last Friday, Reccord rallied his friends on Facebook, calling on them to meet outside Chicago’s Trump Tower. He did the same on Monday.
“The end goal is to get Donald Trump out of office. To make sure he officially doesn’t become the president of the United States of America,” Reccord said. “We do not need a president who promotes racism, who inappropriately touches women. And trying to send 3 million illegal immigrants back home, I also consider racist.”
Reccord said he expects Trump to push forward with the radical policy shifts he promised on the campaign trail. “Trump unleashing more racism will impact me as an activist and an organizer, but it is only going to make me more motivated to fight,” he said.
