On Tuesday, in Louisville, Ky., what happened to young black protesters at another Trump rally wasn’t just racist — it appears to be outright criminal.
While we have already widely reported that white supremacists are openly proclaiming that they are fully emboldened and energized by Trump, the natural progression of their romance with Trump is now on full display.
While Trump was giving his typical campaign speech about making America great again, several different predominantly black groups of protesters, who were simply there to hold up signs, began having those signs snatched and getting cursed by the white Trump supporters surrounding them.
We now know that those Trump supporters are open bigots, Neo-Nazis, and white supremacists belonging to many different groups including the Traditionalist Worker Party — a well-documented hate group. Their social media profiles are full of Nazi photos, KKK and white supremacist references, and some of the most insulting, despicable hate speech you'll ever see.
One of their leaders, Matthew Heimbach, tweeted that youth workers from the Traditionalist Worker Party were responsible for snatching the signs.
It is believed that Heimbach, one of the best known youth leaders of modern white supremacy and Neo-Nazism in the country, may be the man who can be seen in the red "Make America Great Again hat" who repeatedly shoved, pushed and screamed profanities at the teenage girl in the video. He has actually been banned from entering the United Kingdom because of his bigotry.
Before the rally began, he was seen by another protester wearing the same Traditionalist Worker Party T-shirt and eyeglasses he was seen with while assaulting the young girl. Heimbach can also be seen wearing the same shirt and glasses in photos throughout his social media profiles.
In fact, men and women can been seen wearing those T-shirts throughout the rally. For them, it appears, a Trump rally is a white power rally.
When I first saw the short 37-second news clip of this young girl being forcefully pushed and shoved by large grown men, my blood began to boil. In my lifetime, I have never seen grown men, many who at first appeared to be complete strangers, violently shove a young girl around like that. Some seem to just be pushing her for fun to the left and to the right, just because it's what other people were doing.
While it all goes down, the hate for her is visible in the eyes not just of the adult men who repeatedly shove her, but in the surrounding women who look on. Nobody, not a single soul, offers to help protect her or escort her out in a way that is remotely safe.
Nobody, though, was as violent and flagrant as the man in the Trump campaign hat with the white supremacist T-shirt. As he yells in the young girls face, and appears to attempt to stab her with a pen of some sort, he pushes and shoves her repeatedly.
Police and Secret Service do nothing.
"I was called a n----- and a c--t and got kicked out," said Shiya Nwanguma, a respected student at the University of Louisville to a local interviewerin a video posted on Facebook.
"They were pushing and shoving at me, cursing at me, yelling at me, called me every name in the book. They were disgusting and dangerous."
Another demonstrator, Molly Shah, watched as Heimbach tried to recruit other attendees.
"I watched him for hours recruit Trump supporters with five of his buddies," said Shah. "They later attacked the group I was with. The Neo-Nazis threw punches and kicked us. I am still awake now because my body is sore."
What we now know from the full video, particularly starting at around 28:00 in this video, is that the crowd was taking their cues from Trump — who repeatedly barked, "get them out of here" without giving anyone in particular a clue as to who he expected to do such a thing. So flippant in his directive, it appears that attendees simply began taking it upon themselves to manhandle protesters and force them out of the rally. Apparently wanting to have the feeling that they were doing what their Supreme Leader told them to do, everybody began to chip in. A random teenage boy shoved the young girl to one side until she is pushed again by someone else. A man wearing a military hat repeatedly shoved and yelled at her as well.
In an interview with the New York Daily News, Chanelle Helm, a protester and respected activist who attended the rally, said that she and others were not just spat on, but were cursed at and demeaned repeatedly by Trump supporters.
She distinctly remembered one disturbing chant, which was lead by the white supremacists, "You're scum, your time will come. You're scum, your time will come."
"In my entire life I had never had anyone look at me with such hate. It was like the videos and photos we've seen from the Little Rock 9 and other school integration moments from the 1950s and '60s where the fury was palpable in the eyes of the white women," said Helm.
She went on, "We were there alongside them for hours and hours waiting for the rally to begin. They would regularly bump into us on purpose, step on our shoes, accidentally wave signs that smacked us in the face. We actually heard them talking about us for hours. It was eerie."
Henry Brousseau, another protester, said "I was actually punched by fascists wearing T-shirts from the Traditional Workers Party."
After being removed from the event, Helm actually saw Brousseau vomiting afterward.
"All we want is justice, peace, and equality," said Helm. "All of us are peaceful protesters, but we clearly walked into a deeply racist and violent atmosphere at the Trump rally. Some of us who were taken out of there by police, by black officers I might add, were actually told that they wanted to get us out there for our own safety."
All of this happened on the same day that Trump won Republican primaries from Massachusetts to Georgia and racked up millions of votes and delegates in the process. Bigotry, it appears, is more popular than ever. It's only a matter of time until someone is killed or critically injured in one of these Trump rallies.
This is America. 2016.
Original Article
Source: nydailynews.com/
Author: Shaun King
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