‘It Is Our Duty…’: Dispatches From A Week Of Anti-Trump Protests

November 17th, 2016

Awake Goy

Wednesday night in front of MICA’s Fred Lazarus IV Center, Tawanda Jones held the 172nd installment of West Wednesday, a weekly event dedicated to her brother Tyrone West—who was killed in police custody in 2013—and to all other victims of police brutality. But Jones also addressed the current election, locally and nationally, and stared down the next four years.

“Organizing is about us sticking together, it’s about us really shutting shit down,” Jones said. “And excuse me—I don’t use potty words unless I really feel some type of way—and when we say we’re gonna shut things down, we really need to do it.”

After Jones’ protest, MICA hosted a panel inside the building to coincide with its current exhibit titled “Baltimore Rising.” The Baltimore Uprising-informed art (including photos from City Paper Photo Editor J.M. Giordano) formed a powerful backdrop for the conversation featuring Jones, author and professor Lester Spence, Baltimore Bloc’s Ralikh Hayes, activist DeRay Mckesson, and writer D. Watkins (a CP contributor).

The conversation was supposed to be about the uprising, but Spence, acting as moderator, said that instead they were just going to have “a conversation” where they processed the surprise of Donald Trump‘s election and what it meant—namely, that white supremacy still reigns, he said. The panelists turned to organizing and what should be done from here on out. Mckesson stressed that Trump-as-clown jokes still persisted and that “this [election] is not funny”; he described the potential devastation of Trump’s economic policies and rollback of the steady progress on issues tied to police misconduct. Jones focused on love and solidarity and explained that openness is a driving force behind her West Wednesdays event and urged others to organize similarly. Watkins encouraged the kind of one-on-one focus of helping others that informs his work in schools in Baltimore. Hayes promoted thoughtful, pointed organizing, pressing activists to focus even more on the LGBTQ community, which will be even more threatened with Trump in office.

While Trump is terrifying, panelists pointed out, the U.S. has never been a country for black men and women. This is a fight black people have been fighting for a long time, Trump’s election perhaps magnified the racism or just laid it out more plainly for white liberals and other allies. The event ended with Spence asking everybody on the stage and in the audience to stand and close their eyes. Then, he quoted Assata Shakur—”It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains”—and then quoted her again. And then one more time, with a crack in his voice, as if he was about to cry. (Brandon Soderberg)

By the following night, Thursday, activists were already organizing a large protest that would snake through downtown Baltimore. The anti-Trump march, a wild-eyed wake after the previous evening of quiet mourning, drew nearly 1,000 people, mostly college-aged with many new to protesting. It was similar to marches simultaneously going on in large cities across the country, though this also felt distinctly Baltimore, backed by core local activists who’ve been organizing in this capacity since November 2014, when the city walked in solidarity with protestors in Ferguson. As the crowd chanted “Fuck Donald Trump,” others answered with a musical “Ayyyy” between each line, adjusting the joyous Baltimore Club “down da hill” chant for dark times ahead.

Marchers began in Station North, walked to the Inner Harborand then to M&T Bank Stadium and back. The protest, organized by Kaila Philo (a former City Paper intern) via Facebook, began at 20th and North Charles streets at “the People’s Park,” an empty lot often used as a gathering point for protests put on by the People’s Power Assembly. The PPA assisted with the march along with members of grassroots collective Baltimore Bloc, who according to a group statement, “deployed” specific members to assure safety and organization, including Bloc member Payam, with some help from veteran activist (and artist/chef/homeless advocate) Duane “Shorty” Davis. All of them were there to assist Philo, who was new to organizing, and who had started the event on Facebook the day before and suddenly found herself navigating the biggest protest the city has seen since April 2015.

While one person would be arrested that evening, the march was pointedly peaceful, so much so that so that some especially incensed marchers scoffed that it was a bit “corny” in its dedication to nonviolence. On the Facebook page for the protest, which was quickly over run with pro-Trump comments and hate speech, Philo encouraged marchers not to bring signs that expressed violence toward Trump (“Nothing advocating for violence and no ‘KILL TRUMP’ signs. Sends a v bad message that endangers protestors,” she wrote). At least twice, City Paper observed marchers gently checking other marchers who knocked over signs or seemed ready to cause a little trouble.

Early on, as the march approached Penn Station, Lt. Kenneth Stanley began yelling at marchers in the road, telling them to get on the sidewalk, and randomly pushing and shoving some of those in the street. One marcher, Carlos Martinez—who does social media work for Green Party mayoral candidate Joshua Harris and senate candidate Margaret Flowers, volunteers for Jill Stein, and was live-streaming the event—was tackled by officers moments after he chanted, “The whole world is watching” at Lt. Stanley.

Martinez was handcuffed and held to the ground ith a police officer on his back. Marchers surrounded the police, shouting, “Love Trumps hate,” and Flowers who asked what Martinez was charged with never received any explanation.

“The cops placed handcuffs on me and told me I was under arrest,” Martinez said a few days after the march. “I asked for a medic, asked for what I was under arrest for and no one could tell me.”

Eventually, Martinez was taken to the hospital and let go without any charges. He thinks he was targeted because he’s “a dark-skinned Hispanic” and because he was recording the police.

Source Article from https://popularresistance.org/it-is-our-duty-dispatches-from-a-week-of-anti-trump-protests/