D.C. Area High School Students Protest Trump Election

Just a week after the 2016 presidential election, hundreds of high school students from D.C. and Montgomery County, Md. left their classrooms to protest Donald J. Trump’s win as President of the United States.

The latest protest occurred when students from various D.C. Public Schools, including Benjamin Banneker, Ballou, Phelps Architecture, Construction, and Engineering high schools left their classrooms Nov. 15 and took the bus train to the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue with signs expressing their disagreement in the election result.

“It’s kind of scary. We don’t feel he is going to fulfill any of the rights we feel are necessary to have,” 15-year-old Erin, who attends Benjamin Banneker High School in Northwest D.C. said.

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The D.C. protest occurred one day after nearly 800 Montgomery County high school students walked out of class on Nov. 14 chanting “Not My President,” and carrying signs to protest Trump’s victory. Students said they needed to ensure their voices were heard.

The peaceful protests were in solidarity with several other anti-Trump marches by high schoolers across the country – including Los Angeles, Denver, and Portland.

Wheaton student Ashlee Grace told the AFRO that she and many of her classmates felt helpless at the prospects that the racial hatred their grandparents had lived through was returning due to Trump.

Despite not being eligible to vote, Grace said Trump’s tone would undoubtedly usher in long-term policies that would negatively impact her generation. “We have to be vigilant and strategic in how we receive a President-elect who has been vicious, combative, and dishonest, his entire campaign. Honestly, had we, as students, behaved similarly, we’d have been suspended, expelled, or arrested,” she said. “Already the cowards have come out to deface property with racist and homophobic words, along with Trump’s name, so we decided to come out – in broad daylight to make it known that we will not tolerate bigots or bigotry.”

The D.C.ist reported that since Trump’s election, acts of racial aggression, including defacing property with racist graffiti, and both physical and verbal attacks of Blacks and foreigners have become more prevalent.

“Things are not going to be right, things are going to change really dramatically because Trump is president,” Taryn, a 15-year old Phelps’ student, told the AFRO. “Black people are getting scared because ever since he was elected Caucasian people have been acting out of control.”

Some of the incidents included a swastika drawn with the President-elect’s name on an American University classroom white board; the words “Kill, Kill, Kill the Blacks” on a bathroom wall at Sligo Creek Elementary School in Silver Spring, Md.; and several Green Line train riders videotaped a White male verbally attacking foreign passengers, shouting “Welcome to America, do you know what deodorant is?”

“There is a certain amount of pride in seeing students of all races, attacking the White supremacist ideas that Trump and his campaign have spewed [over] the last year.  Fearmongering will not work with our young people, they’ve been taught better,” Dennis Gaskins, an Exxon mechanic who witnessed the protest told the AFRO. 

“They may not be able to vote, or even to get Trump kicked out of office, but they are going to make it difficult for him and his administration to harm them, and that’s for damned sure.”

Anti-Trump protesters splintered into several smaller groups, moving into Southwest D.C. and blocking 395 near the Maine Avenue exit and the area surrounding Lafayette Square Park.  Since Trump’s election, anti-Trump protests in the District have seen nearly 6,000 protesters outside the new Trump Hotel.

“I’m here standing strong to support them,” Howard University alumnus, Sugi Sutler told the AFRO on Nov. 15 as students protested outside of the hotel and the U.S. Capitol.

Trump’s camp called incidents “minor” and said protesting across the country is staged and “incited by the media.”