There’s a lot of encouraging stuff in this report by Alex Seitz-Wald delving into the community organizing behind last Friday’s shutdown of a Trump rally:
When Ja’Mal Green, a prominent black activist and Bernie Sanders supporter in Chicago, saw that Donald Trump was coming to the University of Illinois Chicago, he knew what he had to do. “Everyone, get your tickets to this. We’re all going in!!!! #SHUTITDOWN,” he posted on Facebook last week.
Little did he know they actually would shut it down.
Green and other student activists from the Black Students Union and Latino groups—the folks Trump has denigrated in his campaign—gathered by the hundreds to make plans ahead of the Trump rally. Even veterans of the Occupy movement got involved. When MoveOn.org heard what was going on, they chipped in with support. At the event, Secret Service agents expelled Green, but he said he “quickly changed into a friend’s hoodie and slid back in.” Read the rest.
Over the past few years, there’s been much fretting by old liberals about today’s campus left: They’re stifling free speech; they’re naive and unrealistic. These things are true in some cases and worth discussing. But they also tend to miss the bigger picture: This is a progressive generation more willing to take to the streets against injustice than any generation before it. That’s something to applaud, not condemn.
Many of the protesters who shut down Trump were supporters of Bernie Sanders, but even if Sanders doesn’t win the Democratic nomination, Seitz-Wald reports, “the anti-Trump showing in Chicago foreshadows a possible future avenue for his movement in the general election, in which Trump is the most likely Republican nominee.” These students who are willing to go up against the Secret Service, risk arrest, and put their bodies on the line may be one of America’s strongest defenses against fascism over the coming months.
It’s too bad that Trump is polling higher than ever now. I don’t think his supporters are going to be swayed by liberal protesters disrupting his rallies, if anything it’ll just lead more conservative, law and order types moving to support him–just like Nixon gained from the riots at the Democratic convention in 1968.
https://www.rt.com/usa/335398-trump-defe… His followers are forming a “militia” to “protect from leftist protestors.” I don’t know how much uglier this can get.
I heard Trump is going to buy everyone that votes for him a silver-plated six-shooter and a quart of the finest Scotch.
If a Trump supporter called on fellow supporters to shut down a Sanders rally and said action subsequently turned violent, the same people applauding this maneuver would be screaming bloody murder about the fascist Trump squelching free speech. Trump is a douche canoe of monumental proportions, but resorting to an equally douchey political hooliganism to fight it just proves to those of us who generally dislike people screaming and fighting in the streets while they block ambulances from moving exactly why Trump has so much appeal.
With modern media, there is absolutely no need for campaigners to congregate in public, other than to clog traffic and to endanger innocent bystanders. If candidates have no arguments worthy of debate, then they fall of their own weight. Same goes for protestors and rioters. I wonder if Trump didn’t actually hire the rabble rousers, himself? False flag? Would Progressives ever actually act like such useful idiots?
Ida Knowles said: “Would Progressives ever actually act like such useful idiots? “
Seriously? This is why most of us who might agree with much of the Progressive platform will never identify as Progressive. You all think your shit doesn’t stink just as much as the rest of us.
Progressives play the idiot, just like conservatives, because they feel weak and need protection from some evil lurking.
Why not just debate Trump on the issues, instead of trying to change the topics or distract with noise?
Shutting down a candidate’s political rally, no matter how odious he is, doesn’t sit right with me. He has the right to speak, and his supporters have the right to hear him. We have to shut him down at the ballot box, not by creating dangerous situations at his rallies.
That said, whoever on the Don’s team who had the idea to hold a rally on a university campus in Chicago was a real idiot.
The Dems are saying “Fear Trump”. The Republicans are saying, ” Fear, everyone”. Be afraid, you idiots. You deserve it.
Hillary and Jeb! are the only Moderates. Poor, poor Rubio, I liked him, smart. Real smart….. Anyway, just one left on the shelf! “Status Quo, We Go!”
What ever happened to the Jerry Brown of 1992?
I think Jerry’s platform changed, when his consultant died.
Is Trump a cunt? My question for the Community.