When Donald J. Trump was announced President-elect of the United States, protests sprung up across the country. Most of these protests have been peaceful outlets to voice disagreements, fears, and demands, but some have also been expressions of animosity against those who voted for Trump.
On Saturday November 12, people all across Las Vegas, Nevada, gathered at the Linq Hotel and Casino to march to Trump Tower. According to local officials, just over a thousand people showed up for the protest, a comparatively large protest for Las Vegas.
Prior to the actual protest, local officials were concerned that there might be another protest the same night, run by people in favor of Trump. Although this counter protest did not happen, there were a handful of Trump supporters waiting at Trump International to collide with the scheduled demonstration.
Before the protesters arrived at Trump International, many Trump supporters waited on the opposite side of the street talking amongst themselves about how inappropriate these protests were. Ingrid Leonardo (39) told The Politic, “We all voted for Trump. A lot of people made their minds already. If we voted for him already, there’s no turning back. You just have to accept it, and if you lost, you lost.”
A common opinion among the Trump supporters was the notion that the protesters were being sore losers. David Mintzer (40), a Las Vegas local originally form Brooklyn, NY, said, “I understand [their] pain…[But] take like a man, take like a woman, and get over it already. Look, just give Donald Trump a chance, like when Obama won in 2008. You guys said give him a chance, and that’s what we did.”
Daniel Lugo (26) added, “There’s nothing to accomplish. They lost…It’s coming to a third world country where people are on the streets. Why? This isn’t going to accomplish anything…Try again in four years. We didn’t want Obama, but we didn’t experience this.”
Asked about Trump’s hurtful rhetoric, Mintzer maintained that, “New Yorkers tend to be different. Maybe we speak when we should not speak, but we just tell how things are. Maybe people just don’t like us.”
As the Trump protesters started to arrive at the Trump International, Trump supporters began to yell, “This is pathetic. I thought there was going to be thousands of you. What is this? Fifty?” Others offered boxes of tissues to the protesters, claiming that they were all “cry babies.”
All over social media, Trump supporters claimed they had difficulty understanding why such a large amount of people are protesting. In response to such sentiments, Cecil Blue (15) told The Politic that, “White supremacists have been given a pat on the back for being racist because of Donald Trump’s win.” Others, such as Bryan Heitz (42), added, “I voted for love and humanity. I’m living with HIV, and I’m gay. I’m everything that Trump is against except for White…I’m from Indiana, and it was a progressive state until Pence came into office and look what happened.”
As more and more protesters piled in, filling the driveway of Trump International, many Trump supporters began to leave, but others continued to debate with the crowd of protesters. There were no acts of violence during the protest, but seven people were arrested for blocking public streets. The Facebook page responsible for organizing the protest has started fundraising pages to pay the bail of these seven arrests.
Across the country and around the world, there are those who claim that this election is different—that Trump as President-elect creates an unprecedented sentiment of fear and hatred. Tristan Torres (19) told The Politic, “Legislation is my biggest fear especially with Pence as Vice President. I’m scared that he’s going to do something radical, like make conversion therapy a nation-wide phenomena. It’s wrong, and I don’t want someone to tell me that I’m wrong for being who I am.”
Blue agreed: “I know a lot of [Trump supporters] are not White supremacists, and maybe [they] don’t consider [themselves] a racist or a bigot. But the person [they] voted for has encouraged those people and put people like me and the people I love in danger. Whether or not you consider yourself to be a bigot doesn’t matter, because all the other people who voted for Trump want me dead. They want the people like me dead.” Since Trump was elected, the nation has seen an increase in hate crimes, with accounts of hateful acts such as graffiti, violence, as well as racial slurs.
Many Trump supporters claim that such fears are illegitimate. Leonardo added, “They don’t have nothing to fear. He’s not a terrorist. Why should you be afraid of him?”
Others, like Mintzer, cited religion: “If you’re scared, turn to God. Ask God for guidance. We are all scared too, but sometimes you have to give the leader a chance. God does not appoint leaders he feels would mess his country up.”
According to the protesters’ Facebook event, the purpose of the protest was to, “demand the electors in the Electoral College [to] honor the popular vote and choose to elect Hillary Clinton as President when they cast their ballots on December 19th.”
Although many protesters are hopeful that change will come about soon, Blue admitted that, “Change can’t be achieved in one year.” Many people are hopeful that December 19th will be a day when the government finally listens to its people, but there are plenty of protestors who are seeking more change than just swapping out Trump for Clinton. From home, this position may look like people are unhappy that Trump was elected President, but for many protestors, the reality of this election stretches much further than that. Blue added that, “this is not one protest. This is a series of protests. This is a movement. It’s the revolution, and we can make a change if we keep going at it.”
There are plans for another protest in Las Vegas. The people who arranged the first protest are working to schedule a protest for Sunday November 20. In the meantime, they are encouraging the protesters to call Senator Dean Heller to hold him, “accountable to his condemnation of Donald Trump’s agenda and racist remarks during the election and to represent the interests of his constituency.” In their Facebook event description, they claimed that, “this is a formal warning that we are watching him and will vote him out of office if he fails to stand against the campaign of hate toward immigrants and the injustices of Donald Trump’s views and agendas.”