BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | “Hands too small, can’t build the wall!”
“Black lives matter!”
“El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!” (“The people united will never be defeated!”)
“My body, my choice!”
“This is what democracy looks like! This is what love looks like!”
“Pence stinks, too!”
With shouted chants on a catchall of concerns about what a Donald Trump presidency could mean — both for themselves and the country as a whole — thousands of people flooded the streets Sunday to decry his election for the fifth straight day.
The day before, an estimated 25,000 people had thronged Midtown’s streets in a massive “Not My President” march.
Led by Make the Road New York, Sunday’s protest was billed as being in defense of immigrants. But, as reflected in the crowd’s chants and the signs they brandished — “Sexual Predator in Chief” among them — the issues were myriad.
Or as one man’s sign succinctly put it, “Too Much To Write.”
The march started outside the Trump International Hotel and Tower, on Columbus Circle, with its gleaming silver globe monument — which might now ironically be seen as a symbol of the globalization that Trump would roll back through protectionist trade policies. The protesters flooded onto Central Park South, heading east toward the new president’s New York seat of power, Trump Tower.
Chris and Fatima Coremin came from New Jersey with their two young daughters, Samantha and Francesca. Fatima is from Mexico and Chris, who is not Hispanic, is from here.
They worry that Trump will not renew the Dream Act — passed by President Barack Obama by executive order — when it expires soon, putting relatives and friends at risk. The act gives rights to non-U.S. citizens who entered the country at a young age.
“I think the Dream Act is very vulnerable,” Fatima said.
“Our daughters know people in school who could be affected,” Chris added.
Riding a bike while holding aloft a big rainbow gay pride flag in one hand, Wayne Anderson, from Uptown, said his biggest worry is Trump’s vice president, the ultraconservative Mike Pence. Anderson said he fears gay marriage could be repealed on the national level once Trump fills the U.S. Supreme Court’s open seat.
Later that night on “60 Minutes,” Trump seemed to indicate he did not think gay marriage would be repealed, but who knows what the court would do?
“His vice president is one of the most antigay guys around,” Anderson said, adding, “The leaders of Trump’s transition group are really a hate group.”
Daniel Baez, a mover who lives in the West Village, was marching with a black-paint-stained umbrella to call attention to the Dakota Access Pipeline protest in Standing Rock, North Dakota.
“Trump talks a lot of s—,” he said. “So we have to see what he’s going to do. People I work with are afraid of being deported.”
Katie Flahive, from Brooklyn, who teaches acting at New York University and Pace, said her students — some of whom are immigrants — are freaking out.
“I have kids that I teach that are afraid they won’t be able to finish their education,” she said. “And I have students from out of town who don’t know how to face their parents, who backed Trump. So they’re not going home for the holidays.”
Flahive held a small cardboard sign urging the Electoral College to “vote rogue” and refuse to support Trump’s election. It’s exceedingly rare to have so-called “unfaithful electors” who reject the election winner, but this is an emergency, she said.
According to reports, Orthodox Jews favored Trump in the election over Hillary Clinton, feeling he would be a stronger ally of Israel. However, one Modern Orthodox man from the Upper West Side, sporting a light-blue yarmulke and with his two young children in baby carriage, disagreed.
“It’s a great puzzle to me,” he said, declining to give his name. “It’s not clear to me that he’s going to be better for Israel. And if you’re a religious person, I don’t see how you can support Trump, given his stance on human-dignity issues. It’s a religious issue,” he stressed.
Toting their banner, Members of Make the Road, a largely Latino contingent, chanted, “We are America! No more hate!”
Carrying a “Basta Respeto Dignida” sign, calling on Trump to “Stop” and treat Latinos with “Respect” and “Dignity,” a Catholic Charities worker from Bushwick said she thought Trump even wants to kick Puerto Rican people out. However, that apparently was a report in the Spanish-language media that was debunked as false. But it shows the level of fear and suspicion.
The march had now turned south onto Fifth Ave., where its progress slowed. A large holiday snowflake hung in the air over the ritzy retail intersection of E. 57th St., as Trump Tower loomed a block further downtown. But police had barricaded off the south side of E. 57th St. for security reasons, so the marchers would turn right, heading back west to their starting point.
A Navy veteran dressed in fatigues, Lee Michael Keeling toted a sign reading, “Give Them Amnesty or Give Us Death: Armed Veterans for Immigrants.”
He brazenly explained the meaning of “armed veterans” — that it means, “willing to take up arms.”
“It’s calling on all armed veterans to stand with immigrants in the face of deportation,” he stated. “They can’t own a gun, so we gotta do it for them,” he said of illegal immigrants.
“I just want amnesty for the immigrants. And, hopefully, Obama will do it before he leaves, and I don’t see Trump taking it away.
“I only got a little pistol,” he admitted. “But I’ll start using it if they start dragging people out of their houses in my town. Six million people, you gonna round them up? It’s gonna be a huge fight.”
He and his wife, Melissa Keeling, a flautist, are both music teachers in New Jersey.
“We teach Spanish kids,” he said, “and they’re afraid, man.”
Kat Su, a fashion designer, said she was too bummed out about Trump’s victory to join the protests until Sunday.
“I was a bigger Bernie supporter,” she conceded, though adding, “I still think Hillary is a very inspiring candidate. And it’s important to congregate and talk about what we believe in. There’s nothing else we can do at this point.”
As they marched westward on 57th St. back toward the Trump International Hotel and Tower, a man, likely a Trump supporter, started yelling “F— you! F— you!” at them from the south side of the street.
The crowd answered him back, chanting, “No hate! No fear! Immigrants are welcome here!”
Overheard speaking French to his friend, Andrew, who did not give his last name, is an immigration lawyer. He was born in the U.S. but has a French parent and dual citizenship.
“It’s catastrophic,” he said of Trump’s triumph, “and I’m worried about this not just for the United States. I’m worried about France because they say Marie Le Pen is next after Brexit. Especially with this election, it’s really emboldened the far right there. They’re saying, ‘Today, Trump. Tomorrow, Le Pen.’ ”
Clanging a metal canteen with a fork in time with the chants, Sina Hickey, a documentary filmmaker from Downtown Brooklyn, said it’s important to show support for those being targeted by Trump’s speech.
“It’s ridiculous to say that immigrants should leave,” she said. “Immigrants are what this country was built on. There have been a lot of [bias] attacks since he was elected. It’s not where our country should be in 2016.”
Navin Pokala, a teacher at New York Institute of Technology, said Trump is worse than other recent G.O.P. presidential candidates.
“He is an immoral man,” he declared. “I would never say Mitt Romney, John McCain — people I opposed — are bad men. Another thing is the state of violence across the country because Trump lacks the courage to tell these people to act civilized. This is how we end up like [Nazi] Germany.”
As the march concluded back at Columbus Circle and the protesters filed past the Trump International Hotel and Tower — cordoned off by barricades and ringed by at least 20 police — they gave their parting shots. Every 30 seconds or so, came a different chant.
“Black lives matter!”
“Love not hate! That’s what makes America great!”
“El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!”
“Say it loud, say it clear! Immigrants are welcome here!”
“F— your tower! F— your wall!”
“Your hands too small! Can’t build the wall!”
And, finally, a full-throated “Shame! Shame! Shame!”
