Friday, Jan. 20, 2017 is the day that Donald Trump is convinced “will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of [the U.S.A] again”. (Although pretty much everyone else is convinced otherwise.) In protest, I pick up two banners on long wooden sticks from the steps outside the U.S. Embassy in London and purposefully climb onto the wall to join in with the massive group of people chanting for justice. One banner says ‘No to racism; No to Trump’, the other ‘Dump Trump; No to bigotry’, I wave them in the air in time with the shouting. “Hey! Ho! Donald Trump has got to go!” and “We reject the president-elect” were the crowd favorites (although no, Trump is no longer the president-elect but now the official POTUS, as scary as it is to admit).
The closest I’ve been to participating in a social movement this big was walking timidly in an LGBTQ+ Pride Parade in Rimini, a small beach town in Italy where I vacation every summer with my father’s side of the family. The celebration was taking place last night in town which seemed to me like a wonderful way to bring the trip to a clos Unfortunately, not to my father. In all fairness, I didn’t suggest it to him, but the comments he made walking past the signs and posters being set up in the preceding days were enough indication for me, meaning I made the excuse of “going for a walk” before dinner to sneak off and participate warily for half an hour on my own. Anyhow, that’s another conversation for another time.
Walking in that Pride Parade I felt more purpose and sense of community than I ever had before, and that same feeling overcame me again tonight at the London Trump Protest. From outside the U.S. Embassy, where masses of Londoners gathered including British singer Lily Allen, we marched down Oxford Street to Piccadilly circus and over to Green Park before I splintered off to finally relieve my feet and throat from the physical effects of fighting for compassion. As we marched we stopped the traffic on London’s busiest and most famous streets, we drew the attention of hundreds of passer-bys who scrambled to get their phones out in order to take snapchat stories in time – they needed not hurry, however, for we were such a giant crowd of people it must have taken at least two minute for us to pass. Taxi-cabs and bus-drivers honked their horns as passengers on the upper decks chanted with us from behind the windows and the police at the front kindly controlled our journey to ensure no one was hurt.
Behind and ahead of me I saw an endless blanket of slogans denouncing Trump being held up high and mightily. The chants echoed from the megaphone at the front for what seemed like miles around me, and they did so with passion and rage. Beside me was one of my closest friends, one of those who I organized a Social Justice Week with at our high school, demanding that Love Trump Hate and all around me were others who I could feel cared just as much as we did. There was no room for bigotry. We were trampling any chance of it penetrating our united, cohesive unit as we stormed down the streets of London, only encouraged by those pulling faces angrily in their car at the inconvenience we were causing them, clearly detached enough from the reality of a Trump presidency to be offended by our protesting.
I have been asked, what is the joy and what is the necessity of being only one out of many? To which I respond: you’re seeing it all wrong. If you think that being a single individual in a group of hundreds makes you insignificant, you don’t understand the nature of solidarity, community or togetherness. On my own, I am insignificant. With others – with my allies, with my brothers and sisters and friends and family – I am a part of something powerful. Today, I marched in the wake of the passing of my dearly beloved grandfather who was a follower of Islam. More than that, though, he was a phenomenal husband to my Italian Roman-Catholic grandmother, the grandfather every child dreams of having, the physical embodiment of joie-de-vivre, and the man who taught my whole family how to love. I marched for recognizing people’s hearts not their gender, race, or religion. We each connect with our cause in different ways, but hand in hand we feel one another’s empathy and support and show those across the pond who are fearing for the course of their lives that we stand and we feel with them and that we will fight for them.
Love Trumps Hate, and only together can we most effectively and compassionately convey that.
In the words of our MUSLIM mayor, (take that, Trump), from the heart of the only county in England to vote Remain: London is OPEN.
