WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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Bloomington and Indianapolis both saw protest activity over the weekend in reaction to Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election. A rally held at the Sample Gates on Sunday, billed as “Community Defense and Resistance”, drew between 100 and 200 attendees. The event was sponsored by the Indiana Recovery Alliance and several other area groups including PRISM, Students Against State Violence, and the Indiana NAACP. Also participating were several local social service organizations including Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard and the Shalom Community Center. Around 15 organizations sent spokespeople to the event, according to reporting from the Herald-Times.
A central theme of the rally was fear of what a Trump administration will mean for members of marginalized communities. Representatives of PRISM, a youth-focused LGBT inclusion group, expressed fear of progress being rolled back by regressive policies, and advocates of rights for undocumented immigrants spoke against Trump’s plans for mass deportation and the revocation of deferred action by President Obama. The other theme of the rally was solidarity, with calls to donate to and support organizations like Planned Parenthood and the Indiana ACLU, as well as rallying for the defense of Bloomington’s minority populations.
The event was further galvanized by news of racist, pro-Trump graffiti in the Bloomington area, including KKK tags and swastikas spray painted along the B-Line trail and “Heil Trump” sprayed on the side of a church in Bean Blossom, also accompanied by a swastika. Several reports of racist actions by Trump supporters also appeared on Facebook, although WFHB has not independently verified those accounts.
Indianapolis saw a much larger protest Saturday afternoon. The Indianapolis Star reported that a crowd of 500 marched on the state capital, but supporters claimed the crowd was in excess of 2,000. While the Bloomington event focused more on solidarity and community action, the Indianapolis protest was billed exclusively as a “Trump Resistance Rally.” The Facebook page called the Trump campaign “The most wretched presidential campaign in American history.” 2,800 people on Facebook claimed to have attended the event.
The protest turned more contentious later in the evening. Seven were arrested after an altercation with Indianapolis police. An IMPD spokesman claimed some protesters threw rocks at police officers, and accused four of the arrested individuals of being out-of-town instigators. All seven were reported to be released as of Monday morning. IMPD officers were reported to have used pepper spray during the incident. The protest was otherwise reported to be peaceful. A small number of Trump counter-protesters were on site, including a truck sporting pro-Trump signs that circled the protest for a period of time.
Anti-Trump protests were held in cities around the country over the weekend, with the largest events occurring in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Washington DC.
