March on Trump's Congressional address ends with pot and pan banging protest
On the 28th of February, two different protests were staged against Trump's address to a joint session of Congress. The first was the Resistance Address in Lafeyette Park near the White House, where speakers condemned Trump's persecution of immigrants and the wave of hate he has created. When it finished, participants marched to Upper Senate Park, where United We Dream had a Cacerolazos going, a traditional Latin American pot and pan banging protest.Both the banging of pots and pans and the blowing of Vuvuzela horns could also be heard throughout the march.
Trump's addrtess to a joint session of Congress was not considered a State of the Union Address because he has not been in office a year or more, but the security was essentially the same.
The two rallies and the march took place under steady rains that created a sea of umbrellas. At the end of the Resistance Address, Rev Yearwood noted that it was Fat Tuesday and called for "dancing umbrellas" to mark the start of the march.The march then streamed out of the park, down 15th st,and down Penn Ave past Trump Hotel. Near Capitol Hill the march had to take a roundabout route to bypass police barricades to get to a portion of Upper Senate Park, which itself was divided by police barricades for the occasion. These were waist-high "bicycle rack" barricades, not the 8 foot steel mesh type used at the Inauguration and first purchased by the city for what was to be the Fall 2001 IMF protests.
Trump for his part gave a speech that is inconsistant with his usual stream of hatemongering Tweets and off the cuff speeches. Probably he hired an expert to "write me your best sales speech" to sell his program on Capitol Hill. While he condemned the vicious Philadelphia vandalism of a Jewish cemetary, he would not have won even the electoral vote without the support of racists, white nationalists, and outright neo-Nazis. His chief of strategy Steve Bannon is a former editor of Breitbart News, described by Salon Magazine as the house organ of the alt-right. Steve Bannon himself called Breitbart "the platform of the alt-right" and is now part of Trump's inner circle. The term "alt-right" in turn is was coined by neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, who at the moment is best known for the punch in the face he got at the Inauguration but is also known for quoting Nazi propagada and trash-talking Jewish people. Some of the alt-right is what is known as "white nationalist" meaning they don't openly speak of Hitler and the Holocaust while supporting the same program. Others explicitly support Hitler, thus we see such memes as alt-right mascot Pepe the Frog drawn with swastikas for eyes.
Video of the pot and pan banging march and a bit of the very loud rally at Upper Senate Park
