Two students learn that anti-Trump protesters agree on one thing but not everything
On Nov. 10 juniors Ruby Dietz and Io Hickman marched in an anti-Trump rally downtown. Such protests have swept the nation since Donald Trump won the presidential election on Nov. 8 after securing 290 electoral votes (At press time, the presidential vote in Michigan was still undetermined).
The Shield: Why did you guys go to the rally?
Ruby Dietz: I chose to go because I disagreed with the nation’s choice of a president. I’m very frustrated that I couldn’t vote in this election because I’m 17, so I wanted to find some way to show my voice.
Io Hickman: I went because I have absolutely no respect for Donald Trump at all. Hillary won the popular vote, but it doesn’t matter at all because the electoral college decided that Trump is the winner.
TS: What was the rally like when you arrived?
RD: I was a little bit apprehensive because I didn’t know what to expect. I slowly got more comfortable, and then I really started to appreciate being in a situation where I agreed with everyone around me and where we were supporting the same cause. After that, it just got really fun.
IH: I went with one of my closest friends who had been to a protest the night before. He had livestreamed it on Facebook, and I was extremely inspired by the fact that he had gone [to the rally]. I was like, “I’ve got to go to one of these now.” Since we couldn’t vote, it was really difficult to just sit back and watch, so this was a way for me to actually do something more than write a post on Facebook or share something. I actually got to go out and do something.
RD: Participating and fighting back might not seem like something that is immediately going to fix the problem, but it’s about coming together and showing that there’s still support for what you believe in.
IH: And if enough people are doing it then you can’t ignore that.
TS: How did the rally change over the course of the night?
IH: We got to the Congress Bridge and the atmosphere immediately changed.
RD: We stopped walking, and we circled up.
IH: Some people got into the middle of [the circle] and they were saying some stuff that didn’t really seem like what we had gone there for. They were like social anarchists.
RD: They were pushing their own personal social agendas. Like everyone there was very comfortable saying, “F— Donald Trump,” but not everybody there was comfortable saying, “I don’t want there to be a political system.” We were all like, “not my president,” and this one guy was like, “no more presidents!”
IH: It drastically changed when we got back to the Capitol. The original plan was to go back to the Capitol and then group up again on the lawn and have people share why they personally don’t want to live in a nation where Trump is in the White House, but instead this guy got up on something and said, “Why stop here? Let’s keep going!” And so we started walking. Somebody ran to the front of the march and grabbed this guy’s camera and smashed it. We couldn’t see it from where we were, we could only hear it.
RD: It sounded like a gunshot.
IH: People started panicking and running all over the place.
RD: I turned around, and I saw two police cars and two people getting arrested and a mob of people fighting. It got really hectic because no one knew what was happening.
IH: There were cops coming in on horses.
RD: Half the people were saying, “F— the police,” and the other half of the people were like, “This is a peaceful protest.” It basically fell apart when everybody wanted something different.
IH: It was just hard to watch. You see the videos of that kind of stuff, but you don’t really expect to see it in real life, especially because people think of Austin as such a liberal and peaceful place, but it can happen wherever. And this was not even anything compared to some of the other stuff that has been happening [across the country]. I saw this girl get slammed against a police car, which was terrifying. This lady with a bandana around her face came up to us and she was like, “You guys should cover your face because they might gas us.” And at that point, we were like, OK, we need to leave.
RD: It was a very stressful ending [to the rally].
IH: I think that it just shows the effect [Donald Trump] has. The rally started off as a united thing, and it just got taken over.
TS: So would you go to anything like this again?
RD: I would, but I would just be more careful. In the days after the election I was so devoid of hope, and I was so miserable about the outcome that I was just ready to do anything. I would have thrown myself into any situation if I thought that it might help, so I didn’t really take the time to think about what I could be getting myself into. But I would go protest again, for sure. I would just come more prepared and with the knowledge of what we went through.The majority of the rally was really powerful—
IH: And beautiful.
RD: But the way that it ended was not what I wanted my experience to be like.
TS: Did you hear any viewpoints that made you rethink what you had thought previously about this election or the president elect or any other politics of the nation?
IH: If anything, it just made me disrespect [Donald Trump] more because I could see how many people do not like him. There’s got to be a really big reason for that, because this kind of thing doesn’t happen very often when presidents are elected.
RD: I didn’t think [the rally] would change my mind. I’m very sure in my beliefs. But the rally did make me glad that there are communities out there that I can turn to if I need help. But I didn’t walk away thinking, “Maybe this will all be OK.” I still have lots of worries.
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