Taking to the street — some quietly — for, against Trump
Imet a Donald Trump supporter at what was essentially an antiTrump protest this week near the Riverside Theater.
Standing off to the side, he quietly told me he thinks America needs a businessman as president right now, but admitted concerns that Trump is a loose cannon who as commander-inchief would control America’s cannons.
I’d tell you his name, but he was afraid to give it to me. He said he lives in Pewaukee, in a strongly Republican county that paradoxically dislikes the party’s front-runner Trump. At the same time, he was hiding the Trump button under his jacket from the protesters around him.
It’s been that kind of crazy race for president. Trump may be exactly the right guilty pleasure reality TV star for this moment in time, but the history books someday will say we lost our minds in the 2016 election.
Police kept the hundreds of protesters a good halfblock away from the Riverside where Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich were speaking at a town hall-style forum.
Leaning against the barricades on shutdown Wisconsin Ave. were two women who were only too happy to give me their names and tell me why they showed up. They’re both Bernie Sanders supporters and not afraid to say it publicly. They talked openly to me, despite a fellow protester walking nearby with a sign reading: “Do not trust the corporate media.”
Deirdre McMillan and Rocio Machado were standing in the middle of Milwaukee’s main drag on this chilly evening because they oppose Trump and what he professes. If he’s elected president in November and, God help us, opens a strip club and casino in the White House, they can say they tried to stop it. In that respect, they stand in solidarity with the Republican establishment and many right-wing talk show hosts.
Corporate media broadcast every word uttered by Trump, Cruz and Kasich at the forum, and covered every move by Sanders and Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin this week. So here are some words from McMillan, 33, a home health care worker and MATC student, and Machado, 32, a parent educator for a nonprofit organization serving low-income families. Both live in Milwaukee and also are moms.
“What brings me out is that I’m against Donald Trump in particular. Just the things that he’s talked about, how he’s saying it’s the problems with Muslims, the problems with Latinos. I don’t think that’s it. Nowadays you can’t sit up there and say it’s one particular group. America was built off the backs of so many different races, and to say in this day and age that the white people are the good ones, and it’s because of these other people that America is bad. To sit up there and say now we need to start singling people out, it’s ridiculous,” said McMillan, who is African-American but said her family is so diverse it’s a rainbow coalition.
“My biggest concern is the hatred,” Machado said. “Not only is he showing racism, but it’s the hatred. He is instilling more hatred in more individuals than I have seen ever. This is something that I’m not accustomed to. We have enough racism and enough hatred going on within our own communities. We don’t need the person that is supposed to be leading America to be the one to instill the hatred and racism. It’s just too much.”
“Do you honestly think he could sit at a table and negotiate a peaceful transaction?” McMillan said. “He’s just so used to saying the first randomly crazy thing that spouts out of his mouth. Do you really think this is the person that you want speaking for us?”
“I’m a very, very proud born American,” Machado said. “But my parents were also very proud born Mexicans, and they got here by working hard. They didn’t sit there and beg for anything. I’ve worked my butt off to do what I have to do to provide for my children. I have my own bachelor’s degree. I am in debt because I have to pay for my own schooling. I don’t sit there and ask Donald Trump to pay anything. So for him to say we are no good or that we are rapists and criminals, it’s crazy.”
Call Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or email at jstingl@jrn.com