Anti-Trump demonstrations are a constant now in Washington, DC. They happen multiple times a day, the residents of this city and beyond having a limitless appetite to protest Trump’s Muslim Ban and other outrages.
You run into them in random, unexpected places – like Charlie Palmer Steak on Capitol Hill. The word had gotten out that Speaker Paul Ryan was having lunch there. A very well-organized protest appeared, marching past the windows of this high-end joint. Lobbyists chowing down on $60 Wagyu Strip Steak watched a parade of women bundled-up against the cold demonstrate against the Muslim Ban.
Who are you going to stand with? Lawmakers who send Syrian refugees back to war zones while they enjoy expense-account lunches? Or ordinary folks like those who came to protest?
I am jaded, cynical, having seen scores of protests in DC. But the Trump protests have a different quality to them, attracting not just the young and disaffected but plenty of middle-aged, middled-classed people.
That was evident on a freezing Friday when another protest took shape across Constitution Avenue from the White House – one of at least three that occurred that day. The wind chill was in the 20s but that didn’t stop demonstrators signing a wall rejecting Trump’s bigotry.
That you can draw a crowd on a cold and dark Friday afternoon speaks to the strength of the anti-Trump forces. It’s supply and demand. Everyone wants to come out and protest so demonstrations occur on every day of the week. I talked to people who came out to this protest because they couldn’t make last weekend’s march. They felt compelled to show up for foreign friends and coworkers that were terrified by Trump.
It was cold. I biked home, going by a protest on the other side of the White House, demonstrators pressed against the fences, chanting into the dark night, though Trump was hundreds of miles away, brooding and tweeting from his Palm Beach mansion.
A few blocks away, a third protest was gearing up, a dance party that would take over Pennsylvania Avenue. Thousands would dance in the streets while thousands more would watch online. The revolution will be live streamed.
