Tuesday, September 20,
2016
Millennials
Arrested at Paul Ryan's Office Denouncing GOP's Politics of Hate
"Donald Trump isn't an aberration, he's a consequence of
the system"
Decrying the GOP's "dog-whistle racism," which they
say has contributed to the rise of Republican presidential nominee Donald
Trump, a group of young people risked arrest during a surprise sit-in at the
office of House Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday morning.
"Paul Ryan has a choice," the millennial-led campaign
All Of Us 2016 said ahead of the action, which saw 11 arrests. "Will [he]
reject dog-whistle racism or, like Trump, will he keep encouraging Americans to
hate each other?"
Over the last five decades, 25-year-old Waleed Shahid
told Common Dreams in an interview, the GOP has employed a
"divisive, cynical strategy to make Americans hate and fear each
other" while simultaneously allowing the uber-wealthy and corporate
entities to "horde more and more power."
"I'm 25, I'm Muslim-American, and I'm pretty sick and tired
of seeing the normalization of racism that the Republican Party has brought to
the United States," said Shahid, who was taking part in his first-ever
civil disobedience action.
Trump, Shahid added, is less of an outlier than an outgrowth of
such divisive politics—"he's taken the dog-whistle politics and turned it
into a bullhorn"—and in turn, as a senior party leader and Trump supporter,
Ryan bears some responsibility for the real estate mogul's continued success.
All Of Us 2016 notes that since Trump received the GOP
nomination, only 11 of Ryan's Republican colleagues in the House have voiced
opposition to Trump, while 184 Republican Representatives either endorse or
support Trump's "hate-fueled campaign."
As Greg Sargent wrote Monday
for the Washington Post:
It is
likely that many Republicans and conservatives—such as Paul Ryan and Marco
Rubio—see it as a blot on the history of the modern GOP that the party
nominated someone who launched a years-long racist campaign to delegitimize the
first African American president in the explicit
belief that it would appeal to the racist tendencies of many GOP primary voters.
Those Republicans might even say so right now if asked. But Trump has compelled
the RNC not merely to participate in helping him push lies designed to muddy
the waters around his birther history, but also—and this is the really
important part—to institutionally defend that history. Indeed, while many Republicans
previously repudiated this history, the RNC is now helping Trump validate it.
But, seasoned
activist Ashley Williams, another participant in the sit-in,
noted that the time for playing politics is over. "I really don't buy that
[Ryan] believes in Donald Trump—I believe he's just going with the party,"
Williams told Common Dreams. "But this is bigger than party
politics, this is about people's lives."
And that's why the black, transgender 23-year-old—a descendant
of slaves and sharecroppers who has fought racial injustice, voter suppression,
and LGBTQ discrimination in their home state of North Carolina—took part on
Tuesday. "I'm here putting a body, putting a life up against the words of
these folks, up against the words of Paul Ryan and Donald Trump," Williams
said. "Trump isn't an aberration, he's a consequence of the system."
Tuesday's occupation, which launches a "bold millennial-run
campaign to demand racist Republicans and Wall Street Democrats disown the
politics of racism and greed," comes one day after Democratic
presidential nominee Hillary Clinton extolled the "millennial
generation" as "the most open, diverse, and entrepreneurial
generation in our country's history."
And while Williams does not support Clinton, she agrees that
"millennials have the power to disrupt the narrative."
As 27-year-old Darius Gordon, who also risked arrest Tuesday,
put it before going into Ryan's Capitol Hill office: "We are the
future," he said. "The torch has been passed to us and we have to
make sure we don't drop it."
Watch video of the action and arrests below:
The sit-in also follows the Trump campaign's doubling-down on
anti-refugee rhetoric, as well as circulation of the latest video showing
police, this time in Oklahoma, shooting to death an unarmed black man.
None of this was lost on Gordon, who told those assembled
moments before being arrested: "When there are black and brown bodies that
are being laid in the ground...and no justice is given to those families, no
justice is given to those victims, it's because of this hate rhetoric, it's because
of Donald Trump, it's because of Paul Ryan, it's because of the GOP—which has
normalized this type of violence not just against people like myself, but
against Muslims, against immigrants, against LGBTQ [people]."
As such, "on November 8th, we have to send a clear and
unequivocal message that America rejects Trump's reckless politics of
hate," Shahid said in a press statement. "But it's not enough to
defeat Trump. We need to confront the injustices and the gross inequality that
has made Trump's rise possible."
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Donations can be sent to the Baltimore
Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph:
410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
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