Nov. 21, 2016 By Christian Murray
More than 1,000 people walked over the Queensboro Bridge to Trump Tower Saturday to voice their dismay about the racist rhetoric coming from Donald Trump in recent months.
Holding signs of “Melting Pot not Despot” and “Build Bridges not Walls,” the protesters gathered at Dutch Kills Green around 1 pm and began their walk after being fired up by speeches from Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and City Comptroller Scott Stringer.
Van Bramer said that President Elect Trump, who was raised in Queens, does not possess the values of the people who live in the borough today.
“Queens is about diversity; Queens is about love and equality; and Queens is proud to be the most diverse county in the United States,” Van Bramer said. “We are not going to stand by as immigrants are being used as scapegoats.”
Van Bramer went on to say that Queens rejects misogyny, Islamophobia, homophobia, Antisemitism, a culture that jokes about sexual assaults, as well as hatred directed toward immigrants—including the undocumented.
Van Bramer said that protests such as this—as well as those around the nation—are being held to dissuade the incoming Trump administration from introducing some of its “draconian policies.”
Mark-Viverito told the peaceful crowd, which included a large number of children, that she does not subscribe to the belief of “’let’s give him a chance.’”
“We have already seen what he is about and everything he has put out in his campaign is something he is looking to fulfill,” Mark-Viverito said.
She said that Trump’s appointments already indicate the direction he is going in. “You have an anti-immigrant and a racist attorney general,” Mark-Viverito said, referring to the recently appointed Jeff Sessions, and an incoming “Vice President [Mike Pence] who wants to take away a woman’s right to choose and take away the rights of our gay brothers and sisters. The writing is already on the wall.”
Stringer said that while residents across all five boroughs come from a variety of different backgrounds they all New Yorkers. “If they fight one group of people, then they are fighting all of us.”
