Following Donald Trump's campaign promise to ban all Muslims "until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on," city elected officials, interfaith leaders, and concerned citizens rallied on the steps of City Hall this morning to protest the deranged buffoon who continues to lead the polls. The rally was organized at the last minute on Tuesday evening by City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, but nonetheless drew a solid 100 attendees of myriad faiths.
Many of those speaking at the rally discussed their own experiences with race- and religion-based discrimination, including Imam Khalid Latif, who is the executive director and chaplain at NYU's Islamic Center.
"My home has been visited by the FBI on numerous occasions where I’ve been told that I am being watched because I am too good to be true," Latif said. "As much as I am seen as an antidote, I am still seen as the poison.”
The speakers did not pull punches when it came to Trump. Mark-Viverito called him a "disgusting racist demagogue," while State Senator Liz Krueger said that he is not a politician, but rather "a showman, a demagogue, a good theater performer"—to which Public Advocate Letitia James added, "and a clown." That sentiment was shared by Bahaa Ellaithy, who came to the rally from Brooklyn after seeing a friend post about it on Facebook.
"What I know about America is, they always make some propaganda before the election, and you have to bring some clown like him to be like that, the clown of the scene," Ellaithy told Gothamist. "The values of Americans hopefully is going to be way stronger than his racist statements...people have different beliefs, different faiths, and we shouldn’t be against each other."
This message of solidarity was strong throughout the rally—except for the lone Trump supporter who made her way into the press scrum to shout, "Long live Trump! I love Trump!" She was quickly shouted down by the rest of the crowd and escorted out.
Several speakers drew connections between Trump's rhetoric and the uglier sides of American history we should be wary of repeating, citing (among others) the 1882 ban on Chinese immigration, the World War II attitudes of citizens toward receiving Jewish refugees, and the internment of Japanese-Americans in the 1940s. Sister Celia Deutsch, a Flatbush parishioner and a member of Sisters of Our Lady Sion, described the link between Trump and Hitler's rise to power as eerie.
"If one group is being targeted, other minorities are going to get it too," Deutsch told Gothamist. "There have already been anti-Semitic incidents on the Upper West Side recently...This is how a demagogue comes to power."
