Thousands protest in US cities over Trump election victory

10/11/2016

Crowds take to the streets in New York, Chicago, Washington and San Francisco

Thousands of people across the US took to the streets on Wednesday night to protest against the election of Donald Trump, in a sign of the deeply divided country he will soon lead.

A multicultural crowd a few thousand-strong marched 40 blocks to Trump Tower in New York where garbage trucks formed a protective barrier around the building in which the president-elect lives, chanting “not my president”, “love trumps hate” and “black lives matter”. Protesters also called out against Mr Trump’s plans to build a wall along the US-Mexican border.

Five people suffered gunshot wounds in downtown Seattle — two of them seriously — according to fire officials as an anti-Trump rally passed down nearby streets. There was no indication that the events were linked.

Several hundred people flooded onto one of the busiest freeways in Los Angeles, causing a miles-long traffic backup.

There were further protests in several cities including Chicago, Washington, New Orleans, Boston, San Francisco and Oakland in California, Portland in Oregon, and St Paul in Minnesota. Police formed cordons across streets.

The protests, which were largely peaceful, came in cities that had overwhelmingly rejected Mr Trump’s racist rhetoric and a candidacy fuelled by white ethno-nationalism, and had given his rival Hillary Clinton enough votes to win the popular count. They highlighted the stark divide between cosmopolitan cities and the white-dominated rural areas that had delivered Mr Trump the White House.

In San Francisco, hundreds of people marched up Market Street, the city’s main thoroughfare. The group was a broad mix that included students, LGBT campaigners and parents with children.

Some chanted “Donald Trump has to go” and its equivalents in Spanish while others walked along in tears. Waiters and kitchen staff stood outside Zuni, one of the city’s best-known California cuisine restaurants, as the parade passed from downtown and by the headquarters of Twitter and Uber towards a gathering point at the Castro district, long a rallying point for gay campaigners.

In New York, the crowd was full of people who objected to Mr Trump’s call to ban Muslim immigration and refugees, and deport undocumented Hispanic immigrants.

Amira Abdulhakim, an 18-year-old student from Brooklyn, said she joined the protest because of Mr Trump’s alleged mistreatment of women.

At least a dozen women have accused Mr Trump of forcibly groping or kissing them. He has denied the claims and vowed to sue the women after the election.

Dean Chase, a 22-year-old black man from Brooklyn, said he was offended by the idea that Mr Trump had won. “This man is openly racist, openly sexist, openly bigoted — and he’s the next president of the United States?” he said. “It’s ridiculous. The craziest thing is that it’s 2016 — who could have thought?”

He said Mr Trump’s victory had stunned him. “I woke up this morning in disbelief,” he said. “The whole city was like that, no one talking on the train — I’ve never seen New York like that.”

He said Mr Trump’s win proved that the white voters who had supported him by huge margins did not care about black and brown people. Mr Trump has enjoyed strong support from the so-called alt-right movement, a white nationalist collective that has spewed anti-Semitic and racist rhetoric on the internet.

“The white people in the Midwest don’t have to face the hate this man is spewing,” said Mr Chase. “It doesn’t affect them, so they just overlook it.”

Certain counties across the Midwest told the election story. Macomb County, Michigan — where many car workers felt the brunt of America’s manufacturing woes — flipped from a place that Barack Obama carried with 17,000 more votes than Mitt Romney in 2012 to a near 50,000 vote victory by Mr Trump over Mrs Clinton. Elsewhere, voter turnout in urban areas such as Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, which voted heavily Democrat, dived by as much as 25 per cent and proved fatal to the Clinton camp.

Additional reporting by Tim Bradshaw in San Francisco, and Joanna Kao and Jennifer Bissell in New York

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