It wasn’t long after Donald Trump had appeared on election night to thank his supporters for delivering him an extraordinary victory when the first reports emerged of protests on the West Coast. Videos showed students at UC Berkeley and elsewhere marching through their campuses, chanting expletives about Trump.
The next day, as Hillary Clinton conceded defeat, more organised marches began in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. #NotMyPresident was the rallying cry and the hashtag. Trump Tower, the site of unthreatening mini-protests throughout the campaign, was now targeted by much bigger demos. The NYPD soon shut off the entire block.
American progressives are now working out how they are going to resist Trump’s presidency for the next four years. And protest can work, as a group of Polish women demonstrated recently. The sight of people on the streets is unnerving, and governments don’t like it. Get enough people together and national leaders start having to comment on it.
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