The odd Trump supporter walked the streets of Manhattan today surrounded by a vocal and outraged crowd. Beyond the darting looks of disgust, city liberals, wetting their pants over a Trump presidency, “organized” in multiple demonstrations across the city.
Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue witnessed the most activity during the day. As NYPD officers authoritatively ushered bystanders on the sidewalk to walk and not linger, press pool zones spilled into the throngs of passers-by and independent journalists gauging the reactions of denizens and tourists alike. While the police presence neutralized the potential of significant crowds to form, some received designated flag-burning squares (see image). Ear-raking renditions of “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” were performed (in the broadest definition of the term), and a mobile drummer skipped up the avenue.
The second demonstration began in the evening at President-elect Trump’s other Manhattan landmark, at the Columbus Circle Trump International Hotel & Tower. Under the eclipse of the Trump edifice, a throng amassed on the southwest corner of Central Park. As black spirituals were sung, the goddess was invoked, and NYPD officers responded to the demands of crowd control and open-container reports, protestors chanted with shouts of “Solidarity” and similar progressive acclamations. What is usually a space of respite and monumental art dissolved into the armpit of the park, where the gnarliest of radical leftist hairs sprung forth.
While diverse, the crowd peppered small families and bitter geriatrics around a millennial locus of local college students from Fordham University, Columbia, and NYU. Speaking with the unfortunately characteristic “Umms” and “Uhhs”, what little creative energy that was exhibited was poured into rather unremarkable placards. In attempt to be clever, the signage displayed an unique ignorance that usurped wit with simplistic vulgarities. Common slogans included “My pu**y, my choice,” in addition to multilingual poster sanctioning illegal immigration. Groups in attendance and responsible for organizing the demonstration were Answer Coalition, Fags Against Fascism, and Black Lives Matter organizers. Similar scenes rocked the Uptown path from Union Square as swarms of SJWs, rather than wallow at home or with a choice libation, halted traffic as they defiantly marched.
A self-identified LGBTQ Fordham student, who requested to not be named, remarked “I feel terrified. … I ‘m terrified for myself as a queer person, and I’m terrified for my friends who are people of color, and Jews, and Muslims, and women.” When the student was asked how they felt about the future of America, “Down at the bottom, I think there’s is a kernel of hope. I think it’s a call to activism.”
Vivianna, introduced to the journalist by the single moniker as an organizer of the event, clearly stated the purpose of the gathering at Columbus Circle tonight. “… we need the space to just, like, cry, and yell, and chant.” An unidentified bystander self-righteously pontificated Trump only won the election because “White people not thinking about a marginalized and underprivelaged [sic] set of peoples, and them feeling great again matters more than what any minority could feel.”
These reactions came on the heels of the President-elect’s victory speech that stressed national unity, bipartisanship, and the need for constructive reconciliation. Secretary Clinton supported these sentiments in her concession speech, as did President Obama in today’s earlier remarks from the White House. These pleas were ignored by the gathered assembly, who rejected their own leaders’ pleas to ensure a seamless transition of power.
1928 was the last time the Republicans controlled the White House, the House , and the Senate. Conservative nominees for the Supreme Court would be the first time in the nation’s history Republicans controlled each branch of the federal government. The demonstrations across New York tonight are reflective of a post-election outrage and backlash that will come to distinguish the 2016 presidential election as uniquely historic. As a Republican in New York, I wore my Trump shirt proudly, a fact that went unnoticed to those interviewed. I was excited last night as I witnessed Donald Trump win the election; tonight, I am simply thankful.
James Parsons is a senior honors student at Fordham University in New York and former Policy Fellow of the Charles Koch Institute. He happily awaits inauguration day with his fiancée and bulldog.