Thread: Donald Trump vs. New York City

April 15, 2016
Donald Trump vs. New York City
By Daniel Wenger

Early on Thursday evening, at a Shut Down Trump rally on Manhattan’s Forty-second Street, a thickset man in an orange beanie took the mike. “I’m Paul Harris,” he began. “I’m from Jamaica, and I’m a gay immigrant trying to seek asylum. I say no to Trump, no to racism.” Hundreds of people had taken over a long stretch of sidewalk outside Grand Central Terminal; they had come out with groups like Black Lives Matter and Fight for 15 to protest Trump as a “racist tool of the rich,” according to a sign billowing behind Harris. A couple of hours later, at the nearby Grand Hyatt, the candidate addressed the New York State Republican Gala, as did Ted Cruz and John Kasich. There, Trump encouraged the audience to “take a look outside. These are paid protesters, folks. They’ve got the most beautiful signs. . . . If they’re real protesters, we want those signs made in the basement.”

In his speech, Trump celebrated the glory of “New York values,” but his list—honesty, straight talk, energy, courage, community service—excluded the most obvious choice: diversity. Using 2010 census data, a Brown University study found that more than two-thirds of the average New Yorker’s neighbors are likely to be of a different race. Harris, who is black, said offstage, “Trump would be a good candidate in Jamaica. He’d survive in a country that only thinks one way.”

In 2014, Harris made a documentary called “Jamaica’s Underground Gays,” for the British network Channel 4. He said that his queer activism had landed him in Jamaica jails on many occasions. Last year, he and his lover, a trans woman named Ishawna, flew to Mexico City and crossed overland to California, where they sought asylum and were separately detained—Ishawna for one month in Southern California, Harris for three months in Denver, Colorado. They now live together in the Bronx, near Yankee Stadium. Harris, who spends his time advocating for the queer homeless, has a keen sense for American political realities. “Each politician is exploiting a section of people based on their needs,” he said. “If you’re someone who doesn’t like Muslims, you’re a good voter for Donald Trump.”

For the past week, Harris had been attending Shut Down Trump coalition meetings, and on Wednesday morning he joined two other activists for a leafletting push. In Herald Square, a lanky African-American man in a green windbreaker patrolled the corner outside Macy’s, murmuring, “Bus tour, bus tour.” His name was Lamar, and Harris invited him to the protest. “5 P.M.? That’s when I get off. I’m there.” He went on, “Trump’s trying to take his same old thing from business to the White House, and he shouldn’t even been running at all.” He carried a placard depicting a bus of the same green color as his windbreaker, and held a Trump flyer against the center of his sign. “I wish I could keep this here!”

A few minutes later, a goateed man in a double-breasted suit took a flyer, tore it to shreds, and stalked off. “Trump’s not racist,” he said, half a block up, identifying himself as a real-estate investor. “An illegal alien isn’t a race. I know minorities he’s helped. Black, white, Hispanic, he’s helped them. Guys like this”—he pointed down the street, toward Harris—“are the only ones who have the time to cause trouble.”

The protesters did cause some trouble, though perhaps not as much as they had hoped. (During the leafletting, an antiwar activist named Tony Murphy had said that “the optimal thing would be to shut Trump down, Chicago-style, since no one needs to worry about Donald Trump’s free speech.”) The main intervention took place an hour before Trump spoke, when dozens of protesters trooped into the atrium of the Grand Hyatt, overtook the security line for gala guests, and unfurled from high up a banner reading “GOP + Trump = Party of Hate.” As news broke that prosecutors had dropped assault charges against Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, at least thirty protesters were arrested. Several were seen being loaded into paddy wagons.

Under the lofty canopy of Grand Central Terminal, commuters witnessed a more serene tableau: a group of older white women held black-and-white signs made by the artists’ collective We Will Not Be Silent, one of whose organizers, Sarah Wellington, had leafletted with Harris and Murphy. “No Allegiance to Trump.” “We See Racism.” “White Supremacy Is Deadly.” The police stood by, watchful but unmoving. Hardik Yadav, an Indian-born student of creative writing, at Lehman College, was passing through the concourse on his way to dinner when he saw Wellington’s group. “I thought it was just for white people,” he said. But he asked for a sign anyway, because he took issue with Trump’s “gibberish.” “I’m not Muslim, or Mexican, but I’m pretty sure he would hate me.”

Paul Harris kept to the crush of Forty-second Street, where the protest seemed less like an interruption of city life than an extension of it. At one point, he pressed his way west toward the Park Avenue Viaduct, where the chanting gave way to a drumbeat: boys in white caps, snares hanging from their necks, played for a troop of girls dancing in synchrony, their black jumpsuits bejewelled across the belly. It was Sapphire Dance Line, a Harlem-based competitive team for teen-agers. Harris looked on for a while. He said, “We’re not shutting down Trump’s speech. We’re shutting down what he stands for.”

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-d...-new-york-city

It's so sad that illegal aliens are in our country protesting our party's front-runner for President simply because he wants to enforce our immigration laws and protect our citizens from Muslim extremists entering the country posing as refugees and immigrants until we have a vetting method that can verify who people are, where they're coming from and why they're coming here.

It's tragic that this has caused many of our own citizens from minority groups to believe erroneously that a candidate who will do more to improve their lives than any candidate for President in decades, perhaps ever, is racist when he isn't.

This will all be straightened out in the General Election campaign. Americans and Legal Immigrants will get the TRUTH about this wonderful candidate, after Trump is nominated on the first ballot in Cleveland. There is nothing more disgusting or despicable than to falsely accuse anyone, let alone a candidate for President of the United States, of racism, bigotry and misogyny when they don't have a racist, bigoted, misogynist bone in their body.