People flood New York’s Times Square during a ‘No Kings’ national day of protest – Copyright AFP TIMOTHY A.CLARY<\/p>\n
Maggy DONALDSON<\/p>\n
Nadja Rutkowski said protest is her way of life: she immigrated to the US from Germany at 14 and demonstrates for fear fascist history could repeat itself.<\/p>\n
She was among the thousands of New Yorkers who marched down Broadway from Times Square Saturday during mass anti-Trump protests, where demonstrators rejected what many referred to as the \u201ctyranny\u201d of today\u2019s White House.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As pro-democracy chants rang out, Rutkowski voiced outrage over what she called the Republican president\u2019s attack on human rights that includes an aggressive crackdown on undocumented migrants.<\/p>\n
\u201cI come from a country where what is happening now has happened already before in 1938,\u201d she told AFP, her dog Bella \u2014 who is also a seasoned protester \u2014 in tow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are being snatched up from the streets,\u201d she said. \u201cWe know, we see it, it\u2019s happening in real time. So we\u2019ve got to stand up.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sentiment was an unequivocal theme of Saturday\u2019s demonstration in New York, the city where Donald Trump was born and made his name \u2014 but where the majority of residents vehemently spurn him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like my Manhattan straight up no ICE,\u201d read one of many similar placards, referring to the whisky cocktail bearing the name of New York\u2019s most prominent borough.<\/p>\n
ICE is the federal enforcement agency that has been detaining undocumented migrants and even American citizens in escalating raids across the United States \u2014 and the target of fury from protestors.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in a crisis,\u201d said Colleen Hoffman, 69, citing \u201cthe cruelty of this regime\u201d and its aura of \u201cauthoritarianism.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we don\u2019t stick together, if we don\u2019t raise our voices, then we\u2019ve surrendered to it. I refuse to surrender.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u2018This is our flag too\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s peaceful protest in New York was among some 2,700 nationwide; there were multiple demonstrations just within the city\u2019s five boroughs.<\/p>\n
Demonstrators were fervent in message but jovial in spirit: colorful costumes included one person dressed as the Mr. Met baseball mascot, wielding a sign that said \u201cNo Kings But Queens\u201d in a reference to the borough the beloved baseball team comes from.<\/p>\n
Gavin Michaels is a 26-year-old actor \u00a0currently in an off-Broadway play about the rise of Nazi Germany \u2014 in which he portrays a young soldier \u201ceasily seduced\u201d by the promises of a job and health care.<\/p>\n
He called the role in \u201cCrooked Cross,\u201d a dramatization of a prophetic 1930s-era novel, \u201cterrifyingly relevant\u201d to today\u2019s America.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see the administration pulling health care away from people but offering sign-up bonuses if you join ICE,\u201d he told AFP.<\/p>\n
But Michaels said he was heartened by joining his fellow New Yorkers on the streets: \u201cIt\u2019s exciting,\u201d he said, to see \u201cother people who care.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe spend so much of our lives inside or on the internet and it\u2019s nice to actually see people in person willing to do something or say something or stand up for something.<\/p>\n
Along with signs bearing anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-Trump messaging, many protestors wielded American flags.<\/p>\n
Some even wore them: Mike Misner donned the Stars and Stripes as a cape.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to say this is our flag too,\u201d he told AFP, bemoaning the fact that conservative factions in the US have \u201cmade the flag theirs, as if they\u2019re the only ones who could be patriotic.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur country is under attack. Our democracy is under attack,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd this flag to me represents democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People flood New York’s Times Square during a ‘No Kings’ national day of protest – Copyright AFP TIMOTHY…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,7004,63,87,6986,618],"class_list":{"0":"post-7898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-manhattan","9":"tag-manhattan-headlines","10":"tag-manhattan-news","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-protest","17":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}