This piece is written in response to a article published on the Washington Post by Petula Dvorak. The title alone, “Stop protesting democracy, saying #NotMyPresident is the same as saying #NotMyConstitution” sparked my interest because initially African Americans were not incorporated into the promises of the constitution. African Americans were not citizens, and were not even considered human in the constitution. The document that is the foundation the U.S. was never mine because my ancestors were explicitly excluded from the rights afforded by the constitution. My people were denounced as incomplete humans, 3/5 of a person.
Washington Constitutional Convention
The constitution was written to only include rich White men. We can see that in the fact that those were whose signatures were taken and those were the only people who had a voice in the room when the document was written. How could a document written to exclude the voices of everyone except rich white men, ever include me, an African American women? Black women were the lowest member on the totem pole in the constitution. We were unable to vote, marry or learn to read; barred through segregation and hung from trees. In response to the first line of this article, America lost it’s Decency, Humanity, and Morality, in it’s founding, long before the election of Trump.
I would argue that America’s lack of Decency, Humanity, and Morality is what allowed for the election of Trump. If this country had any decency, morality or respect for humanity it would never allow for the rise of a misogynistic, homophobic, sexist, racist.
Dvorak is correct in the fact that Donald Trump is going to be our president, but wrong in saying that his election is a product of pure democracy. “Yes, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. A majority of Americans who voted last week voted for her. But the same Constitution that gives protesters the right to peaceful assembly also created the electoral college that gave Trump the White House.” In knowing that the constitution was created to suppress the voices of people of color we can clearly see exactly how this worked in this election. The Constitution that reduced the lives of Blacks in the 3/5th compromised and legalized slavery with the 13th amendment has also created a system that can completely override the popular vote. Is that a true democracy?
A white passing person in the United States only writes out of ignorance in saying, “Sore losers protesting the democratic process are just as useless as hate-filled winners sneaking around towns painting swastikas and racist graffiti. I want to say that the only difference between the two is that one is ridiculous while the other is dangerous.” Protestors are not sore losers, unless one would consider a mother whose lost their child to unjustified police murder a sore loser. Protesting is a method for oppressed groups to make their voices heard. We are individuals who are fed up with the oppression of marginalized populations in the United States. Like myself, some protesters are apart of those populations: Black, Brown, LGBTQIA+, undocumented, immigrants, and disabled people are some of the populations that are directly affected negatively by a Trump presidency. To equate protesting with hate speech is pure ignorance. Nothing can equate the two.
Trump’s rise to power has resulted in abusive actions: “White’s Only” graffiti on churches, swastikas drawn in middle schools, even Elementary children are chanting “Build a Wall!” while Muslim women are violently forced to remove their hijab. Some women were threatened with being hung and lit on fire. Despite all of this Dvorak does not justify us in our protest, “Even so, it doesn’t justify protesting the outcome of the election itself, which is the beating heart of American democracy.” The beating heart of American democracy is dead, especially with Trump’s election. His winning has shown the masses that the democratic process is only a combination of confusion and corruption.
Sign reads “Undocumented and here to stay”
When young people, from grade school to university, walk out of their classes in protest to resist Trump we are doing much more than making ourselves ‘feel better’. A walkout is a public display of our dissatisfaction, outrage, anger and most importantly our solidarity with the groups who are victimized by Trump’s aggressive campaign and divisive policy changes. We must fight back to any system that instills fear on vulnerable populations: when students are afraid that they’ll lose access to their education, when undocumented immigrants are afraid they’ll be taken away from their families, when women are exposed to past trauma by the election of a sexual abuser, when religious groups are threatened for their beliefs, when people of color’s voices are oppressed by widespread violence. We cannot forget that Donald Trump won White women’s votes in this election (choosing their race over their gender), so I cannot sit back and listen to them tell me to stop protesting.
Yes, there were protests when Obama was elected. Those anti-Obama protests did not fight against misogyny, homophobia, sexism or racism, because Obama did not run his campaign on these hateful platforms. His only ‘flaw’ was that he was Black, and Americans protested that only fact. He was a college educated, politically experienced, change mater and yet people hung a life-sized Obama doll on trees in ‘protest’. What exactly were they protesting, if not against progress? Yesterday, when I participated in the Walkout with students in Seattle we protested for humanity not against it. Donald Trump is not my president and that may be exactly because the U.S. Constitution was never written to protect or give anything to me or my people.
This is the perfect example of how America is the worst example of democracy.
