Hundreds of anti-Trump protesters marched through Brooklyn on Thursday to call for the president’s impeachment after his supporters launched an insurrection at the US Capitol Building.
Beginning with a rally at Barclays Center, the demonstrators marched down Flatbush Avenue to the Prospect Park West apartment building of incoming Senate majority Leader Chuck Schumer — where they demanded the legislator act to both remove Trump and expel the Republican politicians they claim are equally responsible for perpetuating the myth of a stolen election.
“We are here today to demand that the people responsible for aiding and abetting the white supremacist terrorism that we saw yesterday be held accountable,” said New York City Democratic Socialists of America Co-Chair Chi Anunwa outside the Fort Greene arena.
While Vice President Mike Pence has reportedly resisted calls to invoke the 25th Amendment, which would remove Trump from office before his term expires on Jan. 20, left-leaning legislators have signaled that impeachment proceedings could begin in the House of Representatives as soon as Friday.
“At a minimum, Trump must be removed from office,” said Keriann Shalvoy of the Committee of Interns and Residents. “Speaking as a doctor, Trump is not the disease here — but he is an intolerable symptom.”
The idea of a potential impeachment has already gathered significant support in both legislative chambers, including from Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Demonstrators at the night’s rally also blasted the soft approach taken by the Capitol Police toward the pro-Trump rioters to the para-military response to Black Lives Matter protests over the summer — which the demonstrators chalked up to the fact that the crowd in DC was predominantly-white.
“We know if those insurrectionists and rioters had but an ounce of melanin in their skin, they’d still be cleaning up the blood on the floor and the steps,” said Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who earlier Thursday joined with a cadre of local elected officials calling for an official investigation into the behavior of law enforcement tasked with protecting the Capitol from destruction and violence. “We wouldn’t have even made it to the steps.”
But, comparing Wednesday’s riot with the summer’s Black Lives Matter protests was disingenuous, Williams said, due to the vastly different issues the two groups were demonstrating for.
“There were people marching in the streets saying ‘Black Lives Matter’ trying to raise up the fact that Black people were dying, unarmed by police officers — state-sanctioned violence,” the public advocate said. “If you saw what happened yesterday and saw what happened to people in the Black Lives Matter movement and still do not see the disparity in this country, you are now willfully ignorant and willfully complicit in that disparity.”
Police made no arrests and issued no summons at Thursday night’s Brooklyn rally, which also featured calls from demonstrators to defund the police, and chants of “quit your jobs” directed at uniformed officers.
Once outside Senator Schumer’s apartment, organizers sent a message to the Democratic Party leadership — who are set to assume control of the White House along with both legislative chambers in Washington — that they would continue to pressure them to enact progressive legislation now that they were in power.
“We are going to be out here protesting, we are going to be in the chambers in Albany, we are going to be in D.C., we’re going to be all over,” said Queens Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani. “To make it very clear – the days of the bare minimum are over.”
This story first appeared on our sister publication brooklynpaper.com.
