Locally, at least one other event took place on Sunday in Tampa, and another is scheduled for Tampa’s Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park on Nov. 23.
On social media — and regular media, for that matter — critics are railing against the demonstrators, and not simply because some events got violent early on. Those critics are calling anti-Trump rally attendees crybabies and sore losers who are gathering for the sole reason that their candidate didn’t win.
But the protesters will tell you what they’re doing is much bigger than that.
“We understand that Donald Trump is our president,” Gregg said. “There’s probably not too much that can be done about it. He’s going to get inaugurated.”
“I don’t like the idea of protesting as if we’re protesting the results of the election,” said Susan Smith, head of the Progressive Democratic Caucus of the Florida Democratic Party. “I think it’s more the hatred and the bigotry is what people are protesting. I don’t think they’re protesting because they think it’s a rigged election, which is what Donald Trump’s people said they were going to do a week ago if it didn’t go their way.”
Gregg said activists’ use of the phrase “not my president” is largely misunderstood. Trump may have won (albeit by way of taking the archaic Electoral College), but it’s his message that the protesters are speaking up about. The president-elect is a divisive figure who is helping set a tone that is horrifying to millions of Americans.
“There are a lot of people in this country who don’t like Jews, who don’t like Muslims, who don’t like Hispanics,” Gregg said. “And they helped get Trump elected. Those people are going to expect Trump to follow through on some of the promises that he’s made.”
Trump may be acting presidential at the moment, and he seems to be backing away from some of his most controversial campaign promises. But the fact is that he and his administration — including known racist and sexist Steve Bannon, whom Trump appointed his chief strategist — are setting a tone that normalizes hatred of minority groups. That has already played out in over 200 acts of violence against minorities, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, and countless acts of pro-Trump, anti-minority vandalism across the country, including Tampa and St. Pete.
“I think a lot of people are afraid,” said Susan Smith. “I think a lot of the hateful nastiness of the campaign has given people permission to come out. Donald Trump has unleashed something in people that’s very dangerous.”
Locally, the University of South Florida’s Tampa campus was vandalized with racial slurs. In St. Petersburg, someone drew swastikas on the sidewalk near an apartment building — and an LGBT-focused health nonprofit.
A teacher in Pasco County allegedly told a black student he was going to call Donald Trump, who would have the student “sent back to Africa.”
“I think the people on our side are feeling afraid of that; people of color, women, different minority groups are feeling like they’ve got to be under attack. Members of the press, I think, are feeling the same way,” Smith said.
Plus, in the days following the election, those who dread a Trump administration may simply need to vent.
“It’s a safety valve for people to release their anger, their frustration and their fear,” said longtime Tampa activist Kelly Benjamin.
With the executive and legislative branches overrun with Republicans (and the Supreme Court possibly not too far behind), protest may be the only way to get it on the record that passionate opposition to Trump/Pence proposals exists.
“Donald Trump has said that he’s going to turn Washington upside down, and that’s the kind of thing that dictators and revolutionaries say,” said Stetson University College of Law professor Paul Boudreaux. “When they’re elected officials, they don’t act immediately on things. They often take their time on figuring out how far they go in changing and uprooting laws. Protests may be a way of saying, ‘if you start doing things, we’re not going to go quietly. We’re not simply going to let things happen without opposition.'”
And if detractors accuse those who march of being whiners, they seem to be forgetting one objective truth:
“Free speech and people staying and protesting for their viewpoint is one of the hallmarks of a free society,” Boudreaux said.
This article appears in Nov 10-17, 2016.