As Donald Trump defied the odds by becoming the 45th President of the United States, several hundred anti-Trump protesters took the streets of Berkeley and Oakland Wednesday evening. Students began the protest on the Berkeley campus, where they had been watching the live results, and others joined afterward.
Officers in Oakland tried to block the protest before it reached the police’s headquarters and the marchers dispersed after 3 a.m. Many of them vowed to continue the protest in the coming days.
Polls have once again proved unreliable. So few Britons were expected to vote to leave the European Union, and Hillary Clinton led the presidential race until Election Day when polls tightened.
Wednesday’s protest was one of the first reactions in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is filled with liberals and heavy Democrats. Adam Braver, a 22-year-old political science student at the University of California, Berkeley, joined other demonstrators in the early hours and said they could not let a “racist and sexist” become president of the United States, according to a report by The New York Times.
“He makes us look bad to the rest of the world,” Mr. Braver said, as the marchers reached the outskirts of Oakland, The Times reported. “This is the beginning of a movement.”
Some Latino students, including Daniel Colin, a naturalized American citizen from Guatemala, expressed their concern about the future of their friends and relatives during Trump’s administration due to the billionaire’s views on foreign policy. Austin said the results of the election left him with the feeling that part of his American identity was stolen from him, as the Times reported.
Barack Obama meets with Trump
President Barack Obama on Wednesday asked President-elect Donald Trump to a meeting to update him about ongoing planning for the transition, the Chicago Tribune reported. The White House said in a statement that Obama called the Republican early Wednesday to congratulate him for winning the presidential race and the two leaders agreed to meet Thursday.
The president also called Hillary Clinton after he had known she would lose the race and made her know how he admired her strong campaign across the country.
The White House added Obama would offer his first public comments on the election later Wednesday. His speech is expected to focus on the steps the American citizens can take to come together after 18 months of a “hard-fought election season.” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the president’s top priority is to ensure a “smooth transition of power”.
Source: The New York Times