I woke up at nine to make my sign for the protest. I stapled some printer paper to a piece of black poster I had begged off my art major roommate and scrawled anti-Trump slogans on both sides in navy blue sharpie and yellow highlighter.
I picked out a Planned Parenthood t-shirt and grabbed some College Democrats sunglasses -- just enough liberal paraphernalia to be noticeable, but not obvious. By nine thirty, I was ready. The moment I left my building, the noise hit me. The music was deafening, and the crowds were already loud. I passed through a gaggle of supporters-the line extended out from the CFE Arena across a road and around a corner, the end out of sight.
On the grass across from the Arena, I found two groups of early-rising protesters. Next to a giant sign, there was a group of men, women, and children representing American Islam, an organization dedicated to the principle that “Islam is Peace.” At a table not far from this group, I joined my friend Joey, who had volunteered to help organize the protest. He and the other organizers wore yellow foam visors marked “UCF Philosophy Department” in order to help distinguish themselves in the crowds that would form later that day. Throughout the event the organizers were helpful and friendly, facilitating poster-making, organizing people and supplies, and interacting with UCF Police Department officers to make sure everyone stayed safe.
While I was at the table with the protest organizers, a Trump supporter in a tank top with an American flag on it came to talk to us. The discussion was civil, for the most part. He spoke about his beliefs about illegal immigrants, and his hatred of Obama, his arguments liberally sprinkled with the word “retarded”- whether just a feature of his speech or a calculated way of showing how opposed he was to political correctness. He eventually got tired of talking at us and left.
Joey and I moved to join the group from American Islam, and a few other protesters who had joined them at the tip of Memory Mall, directly across from the Arena. On the other side of the road, tents hawking Trump merchandise covered the concrete. You could buy t-shirts in any color with slogans such as “Trump: Finally Someone with Balls” and “Team Trump 2016,” as well as the quintessential red hats bearing the motto “Make America Great Again.” An older white woman stripped in the street in order to change into her pink Trump shirt, eyeing the protesters with distaste while showing us all her old lady bra.
This is a real Donald Trump cutout that was set out among the merchandise tents -- I couldn't make this up if I wanted to.
Joey, a film major, planned to make a video documenting the protest and the rally. We walked among the growing crowd of protesters, asking people to face the camera and say “I am [insert identity here] and I make America great.” I went with “I am an immigrant”- a part of my identity that isn’t obvious when meeting me, but a part that is under attack from Trump and his supporters. If his policies were to become reality, the ten years my (white, upper middle-class) family spent trying to obtain US citizenship would become a distant dream for millions of would-be Americans. Other people we approached proclaimed proudly, “I am a student,” “I am a woman,” “I am a republican,” “I am a Muslim.” A family said in unison, “We are Palestinian, and we make America great.” It was moving to see a group of people from so many different backgrounds, with as many different reasons for being there, coming together to oppose hatred.
I took a Starbucks break to grab a sandwich and pick up some friends. Between the protest and the café, a walk against juvenile diabetes was taking place on the lawn. It was surreal to see families laughing, volunteers dressed up as Disney characters cheering them on as they passed the finish line, within sight of the Trump rally and the protest. Returning to the protest fed and ready to go, I found a somewhat larger group than the one I had left. It must have been around ten or ten-thirty in the morning. We started chanting, “We make America great,” “No more hate,” and “1, 2, 3, 4, show Donald Trump the door!” Sharply-dressed news reporters stood out from the crowd, smiling at the cameras and interviewing a few protesters.
A man crossed the street to stand in front of us. He was short, white, and more or less middle-aged, with deeply suntanned skin, and he was missing most of his teeth. He looked like a caricature of the stereotypical working-class, uneducated Trump supporter. Unlike the last supporter to come and speak to us, this man was not polite or quiet. He yelled at the top of his lungs, screaming at us that we were idiots, singing Trump’s praises, as the cameras turned to focus on him. After a few minutes, he suddenly stopped. As he walked away, I heard him ask one of the journalists, “Was that alright?” It was clear that, to some extent, he had been encouraged to put on this show for the cameras. His performance was a sobering reminder of the role of the media in Trump’s rise to thunderous popularity. In a news climate driven by sensationalism, is it any surprise that a man willing to spew racist slogans and ignorant hatred can rise so far so fast? It is a chilling, yet unsurprising, reality.
I couldn't find an image of the man in question, who was being filmed by TV crews rather than being photographed, but picture this guy a whole lot angrier and you'll get the idea.
Unfortunately, the toothless man was not the last Trump supporter to harass the protesters. Only a few minutes later, a nondescript man started to move down the line, handing out fliers. In tiny print, with copious charts and graphs, these seemed to indicate that Islam was a religion of violence, hatred, and terrorism. At the bottom of the fliers was a picture of two women, one with only her eyes showing labeled “East,” and one with only her eyes covered labeled “West.” As soon as I realized what they were, I crumpled up the one I was handed and started accepting them from those around me. I started walking behind the man who continued to pass them out, letting people know that the fliers were anti-Muslim propaganda, and assuring people that I would be recycling them. My arms full, I walked through the line of Trump supporters to reach the closest recycling bin I knew of, the one behind my building. When I returned, a woman in a red, white, and blue hijab thanked me for throwing them out. This particular story might sound self-righteous and fake, but it happened. The entire day felt unreal, even as it happened.
As the day got hotter, the protest expanded along the road and across it, I joined the group of protesters standing behind a barrier next to the arena. We chanted, my arms got tired. There were free bottles of water, and a minister bought popsicles 30 at a time to hand out to protesters. To anyone who asked why, he replied, “I think this is God’s work.” The stream of people on their way inside snaked past the barrier. Some gave us the finger, and we replied with peace signs. Some gave us thumbs up, and we cheered. Most ignored us. Around noon, my friend Joey suggested that we go inside, and I agreed.
I gave my sign to a friend and managed to fit each piece of Joey’s camera into my purse by loading up my pockets. We joined the slow-moving line of people heading into the arena- I wanted to cheer at the protesters as we passed them, but decided not to given the threat of being denied entry. As it turns out, this was probably a smart idea. After proving that Joey’s camera was not a bomb, we found seats in the crowded auditorium next to two young women in bold black and white shirts reading “Black Lives Matter.” They were kicked out by security guards a few minutes after we sat down, without explanation, before the first speaker got to the podium. Two menacing-looking men told the women that they had to leave the building and that they would be “escorted out” if they resisted. There was no violence, they just got up and left, but seeing them censored before they had the chance to speak out made me more determined to make a statement.
Joey and I suffered through three introductory speakers. The first was a pastor who praised Trump’s godliness and warned against the oppression of Christians in America. The second was a lawyer who lauded Trump’s political acumen and intelligence, and the third was an ex-marine who emphasized Trump’s support of the military and his dedication to veterans’ issues. It was almost insulting how unsubtle each appeal was, and the crowd ate each one up. Between speakers, and sometimes in the middle of speeches, the mouthpiece on the podium would lead a chant- one side of the stadium yelled “Donald,” and the other thundered back “Trump,” over and over again. After three speakers, I stepped out to buy some snacks. It was around two o’clock, and Trump was scheduled to speak at two-thirty, so I hurried. While in line at the concession stand, a middle-aged blonde woman started yelling at the workers that they weren’t making hot dogs quickly enough. She screamed, “You’re putting twenty on [the grill], you should be putting fifty! What, are you blind? Look at this line!” The two frat boys behind me snickered. Eventually, she got her hot dogs and stopped berating the people making them. This woman’s display, like the man with no teeth yelling for the cameras, seemed like the quintessential action of a Trump supporter: angry, disrespectful, and either oblivious or uncaring to how stupid they seemed and how ineffectual they were. I got two hot dogs and left.
I returned to my seat in time to hear a speech about how “Indians and Asians” were stealing jobs- not even the usual scapegoats, Latinos- complete with testimonies from ex-Disney employees who were allegedly fired only to be replaced with “foreigners” who would work for lower wages. Later, Latinos were mentioned in the same capacity, and the crowd spontaneously erupted in chants of “Build a wall! Build a wall!” These xenophobic, racist words made me question the presence of an Indian couple sitting in front of us, proudly holding up a Trump sign. It made me question the man who held up his middle finger at protesters outside while wearing the Mexican flag around his shoulders. How is it that these people can justify their support of a white supremacist? I’m almost happy that I can’t understand.
Trump is an hour late to his own rally. The same few songs play on repeat, vaguely familiar oldies no doubt meant to appeal to Trump’s middle-aged, baby-boomer fans. But those are far from the only demographic represented in the crowd -- teens, young adults, families with small children, as well as the expected older folks, stood and chanted, decked in full Trump regalia. Finally, the music changed to a majestic-sounding instrumental track, with the bass cranked up so high I could feel it in my chest, The Donald came out. The cheers drowned out the music. He began his speech by touting his love for Florida, specifically a golf tournament in Miami that takes place on a course that he owns. I slowly space out as he goes on to explain how he’s going to “Make America Great Again.” It's walls, and bigotry, and ignorance repeated over and over again.
I am close to tears. I have been sitting in a room with 10,000 human beings who support this angry orange man. I am surrounded by people who believe that I and people that I love are what’s wrong with America. They want to deport people who are looking for a better life for their families. They want to deny the human rights of every person in this country who is not white, US-born, cisgender, heterosexual, and Christian, even though some of them don’t even fit into those categories.
And it’s not as though he simply seeks different solutions to the same problems I see -- he ignores every real problem in favor of ludicrous, made-up issues. Christians are not oppressed in America. People have been complaining about immigrants stealing their jobs for centuries, and yet America continues to thrive through the contributions of immigrants. Trump claims that torture, specifically waterboarding, should be brought back because “ISIS isn’t playing by the rules, so why should we?” This twisted reasoning uses a political and humanitarian crisis to justify the literal physical torment of human beings. Trump rails against vaccines for causing Autism- my younger brother has autism, and the anti-vax movement only increases the chance that his compromised immune system will be infected by a potentially deadly, avoidable disease.
Not once does Trump address institutional racism, police brutality, the wage gap, the deepening income gap, poverty, hunger, the restrictions of women’s reproductive rights, our broken justice system, the cost of higher education, or any environmental concerns whatsoever. Trump takes his much-praised bold stances on issues that aren’t even relevant.
In the midst of this insanity, other protesters provide some small hope. Two young men on a balcony yell unintelligibly and tear up signs -- they are forcibly grabbed by police officers and removed. A group of people standing on the floor by the stage -- I shudder to think of how early they must have lined up to get those spots -- reveal hidden posters with slogans I am too far away to read. A man in the stands gets up to speak his piece. He is booed by the entire arena, and taken out still screaming. Trump addresses us, the protesters, calling Bernie Sanders weak for letting Black Lives Matters activists take over his podium to call attention to racism in this country. Trump praises the police, thanking them for being “strong,” for removing the protesters from his rally. The crowd cheers.
In the lull that follows, I finally break. I ask Joey if he’s gotten the footage he needs. He nods. My heart is pounding, and I feel sick. Trump’s last words were, “We love the police!” So, in response, I yell out, “The police are killing people! The police are killing people in the streets, they are murdering black people in their houses! They are killing us!” Joey joins me. “F*ck the police! F*ck racism! F*ck you, Trump!” Two menacing security guards rush towards us, and I am thankful that we sat near an aisle. Our hands up, we walk out, still yelling. I am yelling because the two women in Black Lives Matters shirts couldn’t, because if I don’t say something, who will? I am protesting because the 10,000 people in this room support policies that are against every one of my morals and values, and they support a man whose ideals disrespect the humanity of people like me and people like my friends. We walk out, arms and heads held high, as we are told that we will be arrested if we try to get back in.
A group of protesters who have been kicked out gather next to the back exit, and we swap stories. A woman asks us for our names and takes some notes on what we say. When we return, around four o’clock, the protest outside is going strong. Many more people had arrived while Joey and I were inside, lined up all along the road and en masse behind the barrier. The mood out here provides a stark contrast to the one inside. Despite Trump’s speech booming from two giant speakers, and the supporters who have gathered to listen to it, the mood among the protesters is light, almost celebratory. I see many of my friends, one of whom had driven up from Tampa to be a part of the protest. A drag queen dressed as “Donna T. Rump” walks around, making protesters laugh with her impressions of the odious orange man. We keep chanting the same few slogans as the rally comes to a close.
