Prejudice empowered: The nightmare begins
It didn’t take long for the hate and division incited and enabled by Donald Trump’s campaign to rear its ugly head.
Division: In the wake of the Republican candidate’s victory, numerous confrontations took place across the country. Many instances of hate speech and other hostile acts against minorities took place. There was a common theme: get out of my space, get out of my country.
In West High School in Iowa City, a male student bumped roughly into Lujayn Hamad, a young woman who wears a hijab. He swore, and told Hamad, a Muslim U.S. citizen, “Go back home.” It was an isolated act. Groups of students chanted “Trump” at passing black students. “I wonder if she got deported,” said a student that noticed the absence of a Latina.
Division: The other side wasn’t sitting on its hands either. They took to the streets in cities and college campuses to protest Trump’s rhetoric and his plans for the nation. In Miami, there were so many demonstrators that at one point they succeeded in shutting down parts of the city and a major interstate. There were also demonstrations in Sunny Isles in far northeastern Miami-Dade and in the heavily LGBT community of Wilton Manors in Broward County.
Division: At Harvard and other universities, students vowed to resist the deportation of the “dreamers,” young people brought into this country as children by their undocumented immigrant parents and allowed to stay under an executive order issued by President Obama. Republicans have railed against the president for what they call an unconstitutional abuse of executive authority in issuing the order.
Division: Theatergoers in New York City booed Vice-president-elect Mike Pence as he entered a showing of the celebrated play “Hamilton.” When the curtain came down, Brandon Victor Dixon, the member of the cast who plays Aaron Burr, addressed Pence, directly from the stage:
“We, sir, are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us—our planet, our children, our parents—or defend us and defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us. All of us.”
The Trump social media universe exploded in anger. Trump was predictably outraged at the audacity of the Hamilton cast and demanded an apology. I doubt that it will be forthcoming. In contrast to the deluge of insult and bile Trump has directed at almost everyone, Dixon’s speech was strong yet respectful and, near the end, even hopeful. Trump has a million reasons to apologize. The cast of Hamilton has none.
Division: Trump’s nominations for Cabinet positions reveal how faint the hope expressed by Dixon really is. Trump’s first nominations foreshadow and administration in the hideous likeness of the new president. Perhaps the most abhorrent nomination of all was that of Jeff Sessions, a Senator from Alabama, to the post of Attorney-General. Sessions is arguably the most virulent anti-immigrant member of the U.S. Congress.
A few additional facts give a fuller picture of the Sessions mindset. He was the first U.S. Senator to endorse Donald Trump. He has been described in the media as one of the architects of President-elect Trump’s immigration, counterterrorism and trade policies.
Sessions’ position on immigration is consistent with his overall track record on race. With Jesse Helms long gone, Sessions is as close as you get to an unreconstructed Southern racist in Congress as of 2016.
As CNN reported:
“It was 30 years ago that Sessions was denied a federal judgeship. At the time, he was a 39-year-old U.S. attorney in Alabama.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony during hearings in March and May 1986, that Sessions had made racist remarks and called the NAACP and ACLU “un-American.” Thomas Figures, a black assistant U.S. attorney who worked for Sessions, testified that Sessions called him ‘boy’ on multiple occasions and joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying that he thought Klan members were ‘OK, until he learned that they smoked marijuana.’”
Sessions has vehemently denied the charges but Figures stood by them strongly and said Sessions should not be “anywhere near the Cabinet.”
Sessions is the man who will run the Department of Justice, including its civil rights division, which among other things is key in combatting electoral exclusion and police abuses against minorities. Given the recent history of police shootings of unarmed black men and the increasing, Machiavellian efforts by Republicans to devise schemes to prevent blacks, Latinos and other Democratic-leaning constituencies from being able to vote, the Sessions appointment, if it is approved by the Senate, would be a very big, very bad deal.
There are numerous other signs that the nightmare already has begun—with a vengeance—from Trump’s pick to head the CIA to his reported support of the Ryan Republicans’ plan to privatize Medicare.
How should progressives respond to all the bad news?
The wrong answer would be: “Be very, very scared.” Instead, we should take inspiration from Brandon Victor Dixon and the cast of Hamilton. Speak truth to power without fear. Stand up to the reactionaries in suit and tie, the white nationalists, the unrepentant racists, and the racists in denial. Reinvent non-violent resistance. If things get tough, if they come for our brothers and sisters, act as if they are coming for you. Get in the way. Pierce their eardrums with shrill screams. Interpose your body. Eschew violence but embrace everything short. Keep raising the cost of injustice and oppression until it becomes unaffordable for the oppressors.
[Photo at top of cast of ‘Hamilton’, as Brandon Victor Dixon delivers message to the vice president-elect as he leaves the theater.]
