Thousands of demonstrators continued to march in cities across the country on Thursday, unwilling to accept Tuesday’s upset election of Donald Trump.
Condemning the president-elect’s litany of crude comments about women and his attacks on immigrants, demonstrators marched along city streets, blocked intersections, burned effigies and, in some places, gathered outside buildings bearing Trump’s name.
“Not my president,” chanted some of the protesters, while others waved signs with the same message.
Their concerns included policies, such as Trump’s proposed plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as rhetoric that many described as xenophobic.
At a student rally Thursday at the University of California at Berkeley, several hundred students watched as faculty members took turns speaking.
“People make choices, and choices make history. We can be bystanders, or we can be upstanders,” said Rucker Johnson, an associate professor of public policy. “We at UC-Berkeley are a beacon of light. We are the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement. We can’t allow stereotyping and scapegoating to fetter us. We will uphold our traditions of speaking truth to power.”
As the President-elect met with congressional leaders on Thursday afternoon, more than 100 protesters staged a sit-in outside the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue NW.
Police nationwide made dozens of arrests – most of them in New York – late Wednesday through Thursday, according to police officials. Although most of the demonstrations were peaceful, police in Oakland, California, said that a rally there turned violent when some in the massive crowd threw rocks and fireworks at police officers, injuring three of them. People in Trump’s circle said they were monitoring the unrest and had expected such activity after the election.
On Thursday, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a Republican, said the protesters were “a bunch of spoiled crybabies.”
“We’re bringing up a generation of spoiled crybabies,” Giuliani, a Trump adviser who has been touted as a possible attorney general, said in an interview on Fox News. Apparently referring to protests at college campuses, Giuliani said: “Most of the kids aren’t crying. Most of the kids are going to class.”
In Oakland, police said the crowd of demonstrators eventually grew to about 7,000 and began to splinter into smaller groups, some of which vandalized buildings.
Authorities reported 16 cases of vandalism, including graffiti and looting, with “numerous trash fires in the streets.”
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