Thousands March To Texas Capitol In Protest Of Trump's Nascent Presidency

AUSTIN, TX — Thousands descended on South Austin to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump just hours after he was sworn in as the nation's 45th president.

An Austin Parks & Recreation official on the scene estimated the crowd to number at least 3,500 people. Those gathered represented myriad interests—social justice organizations, labor unions, immigrant advocates, voting rights groups—and some were students from the University of Texas at Austin and area high schools.

Despite the disparate nature of the collective, they gathered at the Vic Mathias Shores park with one single purpose: To protest the ascension of Trump as president of the United States. After a requisite series of speeches from activists that engaged the throngs with protest chants, the mass of humanity launched their slow march to the state Capitol building, with police escorting them through blocked-off streets.

Unlike mass anti-Trump protests elsewhere in the country, these demonstrations were peaceful while still filled with passion and marked with forceful messages of dissent.

Not yet of voting age, Marley Bell, a 17-year-old junior from McCallum High School, said he was prompted to help organize fellow students so their own concerns could be hard in a collective voice for his generation. Bell was among about 100 students from Austin-area area high schools crowding into city buses, filling the vehicles to maximum capacity as they made their way to the protesters' initial meeting point.

"A lot of the rights we fought hard to earn will be taken away immediately," Bell said. "We need to make sure our voices are heard because we're the generation it affects."

The students help fill city buses on a Friday afternoon when they normally would be sparsely occupied.

Chris Harris, a community activist, said he was in attendance to protest Trump's entire agenda but to help alert others of the need to organize to offer resistance to the incoming administration by letting their voices be heard.

"A lot of people are frightened and disenchanted with the election, but I'm here to get them to organize into a coalition to connect all people," Harris said. Rather than single out a single Trump stance to which he takes issue, Harris referenced the president's rhetoric in general: "The divisive rhetoric he uses is really harmful for our democracy, he said. "His rhetoric and politics are very damaging in the long term."

While he lamented the dearth of proactive, anti-Trump measures that could've been taken to galvanize around (raher than the reactive nature of a mass gathering to protest his inauguration), Harris said the moment yields an opportunity to mobilize various groups into a cohesive unit to voice opposition while Trump is in office in trying to effect change.

"I will say, Trump's election definitely galvanized organizations to take another step in our disparate areas and mobilize as one unified resistance movement."

As the afternoon progressed, more people arrived at the scene and gravitated toward the staging area where speeches were being made. Texas American Federation of Teachers officials helped welcome the influx to the grounds, offering bottled waters to participants ahead of the planned march to the Capitol. Adjacent to the numerous bottled water cases, a Wildflower Herb School representative offered herbal tea—suffused with lemon balm, skullcap and rose— to help alleviate any nervous tension among the protest's participants.

Kimberley Childers drove all the way from Bryan-College Station to attend the protest. She was joined by her husband, Patrick, their daughter Shayna Prescott and their two-year-old grandson, Stephen. As a mother to six daughters ranging in age from 21 to 31, Childers said she was particularly offended by Trump's views on women he's made clear through a series of taped comments—videotaped both willingly and surrpetitiously—that she considers misogynistic.

"It's not about being Democrat or Republican," she said. "This man is not adequate to represent the United States of America. He doesn't take advice from anyone on energy, education, on anything."

As she spoke, her husband arrived to the protest, which happened to be his birthday. "Essentially, it's heartbreaking," he said. "I'm genuinely sad. Anger's not enough."

Toward the southern edge of the park, several organizations lined up tables bearing literature, bags and T-shirts to alert to their respective cause—the assemblage a who's who of community-oriented nonprofits: Workers Defense Project; Black Lives Matter; the YWCA Greater Austin; Jolt Texas; the National Organization for Women; Immigrants United; Lilith Fund; Texas Freedom Network; Equal Justice Center; and more.

"Our mission is to eliminate racism and empower women," YWCA Greater Austin's executive director, Angela-Jo Touza-Medina, said in explaining what prompted her to be there. "Trump's campaign was predicated on misogyny and racism, and we cannot allow for that to be normalized.

At the Black Lives Matter table, Margaret X said she was gratified to see the large crowd united in common purpose. But she noted the commitment to social justice shouldn't be a sporadic interest, but a consistent one, while referencing her BLM chapter that has been around for social justice well before Trump emerged on the scene.

"You have to be committed to social justice on a regular basis," she said. "I'm glad people are waking up."

Arriving at the scene rather unassumingly, flanked by U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett and District 3 Austin City Council member Pio Renteria, was Austin Mayor Steve Adler.

"I think it's important for this community to express its values," Adler, the mayor of a city that takes pride in its progressive bent maintained despite the abundance of red districts all around it, said. "This is a welcoming community."

But Adler struck a note of optimism in noting the shifting nature of some of the hard-stance pledges Trump made to his base on which he now appears to be softening now that he's secured the presidency: "There's a lot of uncertainty, but a lot of things said during the campaign are now being expressed differently."

Others protested more quietly, sans chants but with their own brand of protest. Howard Potter of East Austin affixed a piñata in the likeness of Trump on his body, the type that's become all the rage among Trump's detractors.

Potter insisted the back of his papier–mâché protest be recorded for posterity as well:

Others couldn't find words to express their disbelief at the prospect of a Trump presidency, resorting to the abbreviated nomenclature of social media:

By 6 p.m., those gathered started to wind down blocked-off city streets as they marched to the Capitol. Along the way, they offered chants in unison to express their dissent. Bystanders gathered along the sidewalks to take in the sight of a protest several thousand strong.

"We've come out as the rhetoric of hate and fear," a speaker with Grass Roots Leadership told the crowd in enlivening them minutes before the march to the Capitol. "We're coming back...have a few more speakers and then the wall of hate will come down!"

As they meandered down city streets starting at Riverside Drive,and up Congress Avenue, they chanted along the way with alternating shouted sentiments. "Hey hey, ho ho! Donald Trump has got to go!" went one chant; "Say it loud, say it proud, refugees are welcome here!" went a more specific shout of resistance; "NO borders, no nations! Stop the deportations!" went another.

The demonstration took place mere hours after Trump took the oath of office in the culmination of an improbable rise as commander in chief, a post he's poised to keep for at least four year. But in those brief moments as protesters marched downtown, their voices united in dissent, the forum was theirs: "Whose streets? one of their members asked in loud voice. "Our streets!" came the reply in unison from among the ranks. "Whose streets? Our streets!"

And in the end, they reached their goal, both ideologically and tangibly, in reaching the state Capitol grounds that, at least for now, symbolized their promised land.

>>> Photos by Tony Cantu