Ever since the results of this Presidential election, those against President-elect Donald Trump have been up in arms and protesting against him. They feel as though Donald Trump will not do a well enough job and that all the main progress they have made, whether that’s through LGBT rights, minority rights, or women’s rights will ultimately go back to what it used to be. The media though has been looking at these protests from multiple angles and have defined these gatherings as either protests or riots. There is ultimately an agreed upon definition between protests and riots. The issue brought up though is that different news sites have been unfairly using the word protests and instead using the word riot. It is clear whether a situation is a protest or riot, so I’m going to explain the difference and bring light to unfair use of these terms from large media sites.
Protest: The act of objecting or a gesture of disapproval; especially a usually organized public demonstration of disapproval. A lot has happened since the results of the election. There was easily a protest every single night since the election, and though that has calmed down a bit, people are still dissatisfied with the election. There have been a lot of arrests, some of them even breaking out into riots. There’s been a lot of people saying that they should do it, or they shouldn’t do it, or a lot of these people are professional protestors or they aren’t. Personally, I believe that it’s very much a mixed group although to say that they are all professional protestors are silly. I know friends of friends who have been active in the protests right in Chicago. In general, my response and a lot of people’s general response is that if you are one of those people who are peaceful, you are using your first amendment rights and people should have that kind of freedom. The important thing to remind yourself of is, if you are someone on the right that’s going “this is what happens when you hand out participation trophies and they are just destroying their communities”, that’s as closed minded as someone on the left saying everyone that supports Trump is a sexist and a racist. It’s important to recognize that there are people peacefully protesting but there are people destroying stuff. But those people, especially large news outlets that automatically place people who are destroying things in the same category as people who are peacefully protesting are also in the wrong. There are people that fit that description on both sides but when you label the entire group as that, there is no progress. For many news articles about these protests, a lot of the more liberal, or left sided news stations have given the protestors more grief. Sites like the New York Times, a website and newspaper that Trump has been criticizing for the attacks against him throughout the election. He even criticized CNN in a tweet saying “ @CNN is so embarrassed by their total (100%) support of Hillary Clinton, and yet her loss in a landslide, that they don’t know what to do.” So, in accordance of political value these sites have also been calling the protests as peaceful protests.
Riot: A violent public disorder; specifically, a tumultuous disturbance of the public peace by three or more persons assembled together and acting with a common intent (Merriam-Webster). It’s very important to look at ourselves and see if at any given point in our life if we are representing the thing we supposedly hate, it’s just a different version. Now for the people who are apart of the group that decided to destroy property and decided to throw road flares at police then those people can go away. Those people are a part of the problem. I don’t know how you can argue that Donald Trump and these people are against you, that they don’t care about your communities, whether they thrive or not and you destroy them. For any protestor that portrays any kind of evil hatred, like from a picture that said “Rape Melania” or any protestor that is fine with that, then they are ultimately hurting their cause. When it comes to the protests and the protestors they all want several different things, so it’s not fair for news outlets to place them all in the same category. Some are simply stating that they are against him; that they didn’t vote for him; that they do not support him; that they are going to fight him on things that they do not agree with when he makes those moves in the future. Some want him to denounce divisive things he said over the course of the election. As for the news sites that have been calling these peaceful protests, riots, like I said riots have broken out, but that does not mean that it is with fair cause. These so-called riots have been described as those by right sided news sites such as FOX news. Most news articles have the right to say that there have been riots that have broken out because it’s true. The issue though is that they now start putting all the protestors in the same category and are concurrently blaming millennial's for these protests. These articles are calling out millennial's saying that we are the reason for hatred that has been happening since this election, which is a very untrue statement. We are simply afraid of the kind of things that could happen with Donald Trump as our President.
A lot of people that have mixed emotions over the fact that the popular vote is different than the electoral vote. One of things that I do not agree with is that there is a Change.org petition that 4.6 million people have signed asking members of the electoral college to change their vote by December 19th. Their argument is that many of the people that voted, voted for Hillary Clinton even though the electors in the electoral college are the ones that vote the next president in. Although people have the right to be angry with the decision the electoral college made, this isn’t an issue that should be fixed in this election but something that should happen within the next couple years. And for protestors against Donald Trump this ultimately is another reason for people to believe that millennial's are a bunch of entitled babies. This is just an example of millennial's not correctly thinking about the election and only wanting what they want, which is where a lot of people believe that we are entitled.
So is it our fault for not accepting the results as it is and not moving on or is it the media’s fault placing the blame on the protestors for the situation between protests vs riots. It ultimately comes down to the kind of progress we decide to make as millennials that will ultimately write the history for how the world sees the situation we have been put in. This ultimately isn’t a discussion on protests vs riots because it’s impossible to fix the way media portrays these protestors, but a discussion on if protestors are truly doing what we are doing intelligently. If we continue to not accept the results of the election in an evil hate filled spirit, then history will make sure us millennials are known as a group of entitled privileged kids. But if we take this election and not be hateful but continue to make progress that we have already started then no matter what the media may say about us right now, we can be known as a generation that decided to step up despite what the media say about us right now.