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AP/Charles Rex Aborgast
On Friday night, Donald Trump’s rally at UIC was cancelled due to violent protests. Videos showing Trump supporters and protestors creating chaos displays the violence that Trump’s rhetoric has produced.
Unsurprisingly, when asked about how his rhetoric was possibly responsible for the protests, Trump told CNN’s Don Lemon that the problem was the high youth unemployment rate for blacks. Trump later tweeted on Saturday morning, “The organized group of the people, many of them thugs, who shut down our First amendment rights in Chicago, have totally energized America!”.
From Donald Trump's Twitter page
It’s not surprising to me that Trump found no fault in that situation. However, do you really believe that your rhetoric over your entire campaign is not hurtful to others, Mr. Trump? Instead of blaming yourself, you blame young blacks for not having a job and describing them as “thugs”. I think the outrage stems from you wanting to ban Muslims from the United States and deeming all of them radical, insinuating that Mexican immigrants are rapists, or being blatantly racist toward blacks. But no, that’s not the problem according to you. Unemployed black “thugs” caused the violence. Everything that you say out of your mouth is obviously true, right?
WRONG!
Many candidates responded to the protest of Trump’s rally. I agreed with one candidate’s response in particular. Marco Rubio also talked to CNN’s Don Lemon and said, “The tone and tenor of Donald Trump’s rallies over the last few months has been disturbing to a lot of people”. Rubio went on to say, “If you’re running for president, you have to understand that that kind of rhetoric from a president—or a major presidential candidate– has ramifications”.
On the other hand, the images and videos shown during the protest were very disturbing to see. I understand that people are angry, but Trump’s rhetoric is unfortunately protected under the first amendment. Regardless of how racist Trump’s eloquence is, that does not give people the justification to disrupt an organized event and reek havoc. Violence should not have a position in politics. If one does not like what a candidate is saying, then one simply should not go to that event. Besides that point, Trump’s violent rhetoric is the cause for the violence that took place. He is responsible for what happened.
However, protests are not the way to beat Trump. People should not deem the protest on Friday as a defeat for Trump. There is power in protest, but there is more power in voting. Voting against Trump is the best way to ensure that he does not enter the White House. Furthermore, there seemed to be a lot more of blacks protesting than there has been blacks actually getting out to vote. The chart below from the U.S. census bureau shows the small percentage of blacks that actually vote from the years 2004-2014.
The voting discrepancy for blacks is another problem to discuss for another time. However, as many protestors that there were on Friday, there should be no excuse for people in Illinois not voting on Tuesday.