Saying Donald Trump Is ‘Not Our President,’ Jews Join Protests Rolling Across Country
Image by Getty Images
By Sam Kestenbaum November 10, 2016
Thousands gathered across the country to march, shut down roadways and shout slogans against the election of Donald Trump as president.
Some carried signs reading: “Jews Reject Trump.”
Members of activist Jewish groups were in the streets in New York, California and Oregon, protesting a president-elect they fear has fueled the flames of racism and sexism in America and wanting to demonstrate that his views do not represent their own.
“The values espoused by Trump are not American values,” said Cynthia Greenberg, a Brooklyn-based activist with the group Jews for Racial and Economic Justice.
“His remarks about immigrants, about Muslims, about women, about Jews are deeply disturbing and contrary to all the values that I hold as an American and as a Jew,” Greenberg said.
To be sure, a quarter of American Jews did vote for Trump and are happy with his promises to make drastic changes, and to act more aggressively as an ally for Israel by doing such things as moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
But among the 70 percent that didn’t vote for him, some are devastated.
“By demonstrating, we show that there is a huge number of people that don’t want to see him as president,” said Naomi Dann, media program manager at the leftist group Jewish Voice for Peace, who marched through Manhattan on Wednesday night.
“There is a huge number of people who think that he’s anti-Muslim, anti-woman, anti-immigrant,” said Dann, “and we are ready to organize and step up with ant-racist work over the next four years.”
At protests in New York City, some carried signs that read “Not our president.” Another protestor used a projector to display a repeated refrain on the side of a building: “Grieve, Organize, Resist.”
Cynthia Greenberg, at left, marched in Manhattan in protest of Donald Trump’s election. Image by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice
JREFJ put a call out on their website for members to join them in protest: “Our work didn’t begin and won’t end at the ballot box. We aren’t going anywhere.”
“Last time NYC felt like this was 9/11,” Jill Jacobs, executive director of T’ruah: the Rabbinical Call for Human Rights, wrote on Twitter. “But then we were mourning tragedy that had happened. Now feels like pre-mourning tragedy to come.”
Email Sam Kestenbaum at kestenbaum@forward.com and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum
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