WASHINGTON: A day after hardliner Republican Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the presidential election, thousands of Americans have taken to the streets across the country to protest against Trump’s victory in the presidential election, blasting his campaign rhetoric around immigrants, Muslims and other groups. Some burned a US flag as they reached the Trump Tower, while other chanted, “Not my president”.
On Wednesday evening, thousands of protesters thronged streets in midtown Manhattan, New York.
In Chicago, roughly 1,000 people attempted to gather outside the Trump International Hotel and Tower downtown while chanting phrases like “No Trump! No KKK! No racist USA”. Chicago police closed roads in the area, blocking the demonstrators’ path.
Protesters railed against Trump’s campaign pledge to build a wall along the border with Mexico to keep out undocumented immigrants and other policies perceived as affecting people of colour.
In his victory speech, however, Trump said he would be president for all Americans, saying, “It is time for us to come together as one united people.”
In Austin, the Texas capital, about 400 people staged a march through the city’s streets, police said. Other protests were organised in Washington, DC, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Tennessee and other cities.
Earlier in the day, some 1,500 California students and teachers rallied in the courtyard of Berkeley High School, a San Francisco Bay Area city known for its progressive politics, before marching towards the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.
Hundreds of high school and college students walked out in protest in Seattle, Phoenix, Los Angeles and three other cities in the Bay Area, Richmond, El Cerrito and Oakland.
A predominantly Latino group of about 300 high school students walked out of classes on Wednesday morning in Los Angeles and marched to the steps of City Hall, where they held a brief but energetic rally.
Chanting in Spanish, “The people united will never be defeated,” the group held signs with slogans such as “Not Supporting Racism, Not My President” and “Immigrants Make America Great.”
Many of those students were members of the “Dreamers” generation, children whose parents entered the United States with them illegally, school officials said, and who fear deportation under a Trump administration.
Wednesday’s demonstrations followed a night of protests around the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere in the country in response to Trump’s political upset.
In heavily Democrat Washington, DC, hundreds of Trump opponents and a few of his supporters gathered by the White House, chanting in support of immigrants and against the president-elect.
Demonstrators smashed storefront windows and set garbage and tires ablaze late Tuesday in downtown Oakland, California.
