January 20th Protest
Statement from Portland’s Resistance on J20 Protest’s
Trumpism has been festering for a long time and on January 20th, that toxicity will be given the safest space throughout America: The White House.
On that day, we will vocally air our grievances with every element of Trump’s agenda and what he stands for: the trauma of deportation, the hatred of islamophobia, the institutional violence of racism, the predatory practices of prisons and policing and imperialism, the exploitation under capitalism, the nausea of a known sexual abuser that remains in power, the fear of precarity and houselessness, and the endless anger at white supremacy.
Starting as early as 3:30, we will rally for broad group of representative speakers at Pioneer Square.
January 20th will be a historical moment NOT because Donald J. Trump was inaugurated but because it will be a singular rallying point that allows for a transformative solidarity to grow and progressive demands to be made. We will not go backwards. Organizations will attend with literature and we are actively encouraging protesters to look for ways to plug into the resistance, learn, network and act with the same energy they protest Trump. Starting as early as 3:30, we will rally for broad group of representative speakers at Pioneer Square. The assembly will then move at 5:30 on a march planned and led by Portland’s Resistance.
We reject the assumption that non-peaceful protesters are necessarily “violent” and encourage the media to move past this binary.
Portland’s Resistance does not speak for every single protester because protestors are not a homogenous bloc. We do however advocate our own strategies for safe marches and effective dissent. Peaceful demonstration is our tactic, as it always has been. We do so to make our marches accessible for everyone to ensure that no one is at home feeling invisible or in the crowd feeling unsafe.
We reject the assumption that non-peaceful protesters are necessarily “violent” and encourage the media to move past this binary. As Martin Luther King Jr once said, “A riot is the language of the unheard” we need to move past the first level analysis of simply condemning actions we don’t agree with and rather consider why so many people feel unheard in this political climate.
J20 is neither the beginning nor the ending.
The struggle started a long time ago.
This is just the moment we were always waiting for.
