Trump’s supporters can stop saying that the protesters at every Trump rally are the ones inciting violence. I was there, I witnessed the assaults, and that simply is not true.
We’ve all seen the video from the Louisville rally on March 1, 2016 in which a young woman of color, a student from the University of Louisville, was shoved, screamed at, and told that “no one wants you here.” Even a man from the American Legion, a veteran, felt that it was okay to put his hands on this woman.
The full story of the white supremacists who assaulted this Black student at a Trump rally.https://t.co/WPywX72tVOhttps://t.co/vpJrCxH1bP
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) March 2, 2016
What I saw with my own eyes at that rally was equally horrifying and instigated entirely by Trump supporters. My sister and I attended the rally to protest, but no one around us knew that. We were just two 40-something white women standing to the side and talking to one another. When a racially diverse group of college students joined us, the entire atmosphere changed.
Those students were doing nothing different than what my sister and I had been doing a few minutes prior: standing around and talking. No one was shouting or protesting yet when I heard the n-word used and the threats fly. When we tried to join the crowd waiting for Trump, silent except for our conversations with one another, one woman practically spat six inches from my face, “I don’t think THOSE PEOPLE are here to support Trump, and they’re NOT standing by me.” Her companion, a man, replied, “Don’t worry. If they don’t move, there’s enough of us here to MOVE them.”
I was there, my sister was there, and those students were there to have their voices heard. They were there to show that our city, our state, and this country are not made up of people who support Trump’s racist messages. They were there, and so were we, to exercise a constitutional right to peaceful protest and the freedom to assemble.
My sister and I were shoved out of the Kentucky International Convention Center. I was hit in the eye and the back of the head by a man throwing ice and had a black eye later. I don’t believe the hits were intentional, but the man didn’t stop when I looked at him and he knew I was standing there. Security was not going to let us back in once we were shoved out, and I felt horrible for the group of young people with whom we had been standing. We waited outside briefly to see if they would be shoved out, as well, but we didn’t see them again until I got home and found a video of what happened to them.
This video was posted by one of the perpetrators of the assault and titled “Us helping some black lives matter protesters out :).” This is video of what happened to those young college students who had stood with us, arms linked, chanting. It is nothing less than criminal assault, and those who perpetrated that assault should face charges for it. I’ll warn you: it’s shocking and it’s violent.
These people were doing nothing wrong. They were simply chanting and making their presence known and it is clear that these grown men violently assaulted them, knocking one of the women to the ground. Is this what passes for political discourse in this country now?
We cannot allow this to become the norm. We cannot allow our country to regress into this sort of violence against people of color and others who stand up for them. Most importantly, we can’t look at this violence, this racism, this hatred, and allow it to become our nation’s president.
Before March 1, 2016, my biggest fear was that Donald Trump may actually become the leader of the free world. I am now much more frightened to know simply that I live in a city, a state, and a country with people like these.
Featured image via ABC News
