One thing you can do is don't believe those who say all protesters are rioters. The tradition of protest is as American as apple pie, from the Boston Tea Party - which destroyed property - to the Tea Partiers. If you support cracking down on us, you are trampling on your own rights if you ever want to protest in the future. We protest because we think Trump's policies will do harm to our republic and the earth. That's the bottom line.
As all this was happening, Trump signed an executive order that many say will gut Obamacare and leave millions of Americans without health insurance. His administration replaced a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. in the White House with one of Winston Churchill. The White House website removed pages on climate change, civil rights, and LGBTQ issues.
Such actions on Day One show that Trump doesn't really care about most people. He cares about Trump and other really wealthy people who support him. Cross him, and you are as big an enemy as those who dared to not vote for him.
Some say Trump and allies like VP Mike Pence and House Speaker Paul Ryan will go after Medicare, Social Security, college loan programs, PBS, the National Endowment for the Arts, women's anti-violence measures and more with draconian cuts, if not killing those programs. If such policies continue, expect more to join movements like the black bloc.
I won't be one of them. But if Trump continues to show he is not a president for all of us, perhaps it will become tougher for critics like me to speak out about their tactics.
Jack Thor is author of How to Survive in TrumPenceLand [2017] and Born to Cheat [2006].
Many signs like this one were displayed in D.C. on Jan. 20, 2017, during the inauguration of Donald Trump.
(Image by Jack Thor) Details DMCA
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