“¡No Tenemos Miedo!”
EL PASO, TEXAS – An hour before it was set to start and the people were starting to trickle into San Jacinto Plaza Friday night.
They came with a colorful assortment of neon posters, a couple of suited up piñatas, along with their voices.
“This pussy grabs back,” read one sign. “I’m a nasty woman,” read another. The gritty nature of the posters could only mean one thing. The people of El Paso were staging what many cities in the United States had resorted to in the days following Tuesday’s presidential election.
This was a Trump protest.
As protesters trickled in, the crowd grew into a sizable number that included millennials, middle-aged families, women, and children.
As 8 o’clock rolled around, protestors started a series of chants that reverberated off the industrial canyon that is the downtown El Paso skyline that echoed far beyond the borderland.
“Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Donald trump has got to go!” They cheered. It was a resentment they shared with many people across the country.
They were there to unite. They were there to show solidarity. They were there to share in their frustration.
Children held sign that proclaimed Donald Trump was not their president. Many held flags bearing the LGBTQ rainbow. A woman walked to the beat of her own drum (literally).
Speakers addressed the crowd. It was obvious they felt the protest was necessary. However, they wanted to do what a lot of cities across the country couldn’t do – protest peacefully.
They discussed civil rights. How they feared the country was shifting to accept negative social norms of vulnerable groups of people, and pondered how they could allow a Donald Trump presidency to prevail.
As the night pressed on, protestors decapitated a Donald Trump piñata and took to the streets in an organized march around downtown. Signs in hand, fists raised, friends walked together chanting familiar cadences. Parents pushed their kids on strollers. Cars honked. Onlookers took pictures across the the street from their cell phones. It was electrifying.
By the time the crowd returned to the plaza they had started off from, the crowd’s numbers began to dwindle. It was mostly millennials who stayed behind. A lot of the middle aged women and families had disappeared. Still, the protestors seized the opportunity to communicate with one another.
A boombox raised overhead, speakers addressed the crowd yet again. This time a veteran, an immigrant, a man visiting from Oregon, and a couple of poets addressed the crowd.
As the night drew on, the protest dwindled away into the night. The city had just expressed what the rest of the country couldn’t do. They protested peacefully.
As one man addressed the crowd he said, “El Paso, I’ve never been more proud of my city than I am right now…no tenemos miedo!”
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Great photos!
Hard to shoot at night. Well done.
Try to “drag” your shutter” a little more to pull in the atmosphhee and ambient light. That would give it a less Flash” look.
Good job.
Hard to shoot at night. Well done.
Try to “drag” your shutter” a little more to pull in the atmosphere and ambient light. That would give it a less Flash” look.
Good job.