Sunspots (https://sunspots.cornellsun.com/tag/protest/)
With an open mind and two sides of the story, you’re bound to learn something new. Welcome to the zoo! This is a blog where both the Republican and Democratic viewpoints are represented. The blog is not meant to sway you either way necessarily, just to present both sides of the story. You may not agree with the whole article, but hey, you’re likely to agree with half!
The following statement comes from a group of people from Islamic Alliance for Justice, Native American Students at Cornell (NASAC), Cornell DREAM Team, MEChA de Cornell and Asian Pacific Americans for Action (APAA) who were affected directly or indirectly by the events of this past week and decided to come together to organize. We’re a collective group of students, and this is our collective statement:
Over the past week, President Donald Trump issued a series of executive actions, some of which explicitly target marginalized communities including Muslims, refugees, undocumented peoples, Indigenous folx, Latinx folx, people who cannot access healthcare and working class people. One of these executive orders prohibits entry to the United States for citizens of seven Muslim-majority nations which include Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Sudan and Syria. Since Trump has claimed that America’s shores are still open to Christian refugees from these countries, the ban rests on the presupposition that Muslims from these countries are terrorists and that Islam is an inherently violent religion. It is worth noting that each of these seven countries has either been directly bombed by the United States or hit with debilitating economic sanctions, and that their residents are being prevented from escaping the conditions created in these countries by US imperialism.
TW: Trump, misogyny, racism
We wake up at 9 am and immediately check Twitter for news of the day’s first protests. Blockades have already gone up at key entrance points around the city; Black Lives Matter, NoDAPL and other organizers have chained themselves to each other and to the ground. We sip coffee and don dark colors. We take our time putting the final touches on makeshift cardboard signs with sharpies. I debate over whether I should bring gloves or not.
I’m baffled. I’m appalled. I hope the majority of Americans are as well. Last Friday evening, a rally that Donald Trump scheduled in Chicago was canceled and tensions between protesters and his supporters reached incredible new heights. As expected, the newscasters began asking, “Was Trump to blame for the violence we were seeing?”
Of course.