Just a week before the November 8th election, attackers set a church in Greenville, Mississippi, on fire. The historically black church was targeted in what authorities believe was an act of voter intimidation, its walls spray-painted with the phrase “Vote Trump.”I'd like to remind all the Trump voters out there that this is, in part, what you voted for:
“This kind of attack happened in the 1950s and 1960s,” Greenville’s mayor said, “but it shouldn’t happen in 2016.”
The incident was just a harbinger of what has become a national outbreak of hate, as white supremacists celebrate Donald Trump’s victory.* In the ten days following the election, there were almost 900 reports of harassment and intimidation from across the nation. Many harassers invoked Trump’s name during assaults, making it clear that the outbreak of hate stemmed in large part from his electoral success.
“I have experienced discrimination in my life, but never in such a public and unashamed manner,” an Asian-American woman reported after a man told her to “go home” as she left an Oakland train station. Likewise, a black resident whose apartment was vandalized with the phrase “911 nigger” reported that he had “never witnessed anything like this.” A Los Angeles woman, who encountered a man who told her he was “Gonna beat [her] pussy,” stated that she was in this neighborhood “all the time and never experienced this type of language before.” Not far away in Sunnyvale, California, a transgender person reported being targeted with homophobic slurs at a bar where “I’ve been a regular customer for 3 years — never had any issues.”You may not have intended it but it's there (partly) because of you.
You remember when candidate Clinton said this:
You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people -- now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks -- they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.and she caught hell for it?
Tell that to this mother as quoted by the SPLC:
My 12-year-old daughter is African American. A boy approached her and said, “Now that Trump is president, I’m going to shoot you and all the blacks I can find.”Or these folks:
People also have been harassed in their homes. Many have reported receiving threatening messages on their front lawns, slipped under their front doors, left on their porches, and taped onto their windshields. A Sudanese-American family in Iowa City, Iowa, for example, found a note attached to their door that read, “You can all go home now. We don’t want niggers and terrorists here. #trump.” A lesbian couple in Austin, Texas, came home to find “DYKE,” “Trump,” and a swastika spray-painted onto their door. One residence in Pittsburg, California, draped a banner proclaiming to neighbors: “You can hang a nigger from a tree equal rights he’ll never see.”Or these:
Since the election, LGBT people have experienced harassment by those who allege that the president-elect shares their anti-LGBT sentiments. In Brighton, Michigan, a woman was approached by two white men who told her, “Just so you know, we hate fucking dykes and so does our President.” In Russellville, Arkansas, a woman found a note written on a piece of trash taped to her door, which read, “Trump says get back in the closet, fags!”America, fuck yeah!
In Sarasota, Florida, a 75-year-old gay man was ripped from his car and beaten by an assailant who told him, “You know my new president says we can kill all you faggots now.”
Comin' again to save the mother fuckin' day yeah!
Trump voters, you might not think so (or want to) but you voted for this. This is yours. This is your new normal. I will resist your new normal.