Donald Trump became the President-Elect of the United States on Tuesday night: he won the Electoral College, if not the popular vote. Almost as soon as he gave his victory speech, people began to protest. With good reason: fears that his presidency would encourage hate crimes and bigotry were realized less than 24 hours after it became clear that he had won. Hijabs were ripped off people's heads, people of colour were told to "go home", whether to Africa or Mexico, swastikas and slurs were spray painted on walls and classroom doors, and women were harassed and told they were going to be assaulted (or is "grab them by the p***y" still locker room talk?). Even children participated: according to the SPLC, more than one-third of the 2000 K-12 teachers surveyed have reported an increase in anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment in their classrooms. One reported that her Latino students were carrying their birth certificates and Social Security cards because they're afraid of deportation.

To add fuel to the fire, the Ku Klux Klan have started recruiting again, in South Carolina, Alabama, Kansas, and Georgia. Their official newspaper endorsed Trump as president, as did one of their former grand wizards, David Duke, who told (white) people that voting against him would be "treason to [their] heritage". They're planning on holding a victory parade in North Carolina to celebrate Trump's victory. Donald Trump has now disavowed them (though he was hesitant to do so at first), but has Steve Bannon (noted white nationalist and former president of Breitbart news) as the Chief White House Strategist: a mixed message to say the least.

All this has served to terrify people, especially those that have been and continue to be the targets of hate crimes. But instead of leaving the country, or rioting, people opted for peaceful protest. I went to one the day after the election at the Boston State House. It began with only about fifteen to twenty people walking through the Commons and grew to almost a hundred outside the gates of the State House, and this for a protest that was only briefly advertised on social media: there was a larger, better advertised one later on that drew over a thousand people. State police arrived to replace the BPD fairly quickly but said that they "[were] only there to monitor" the protest and make sure nothing kicked off.

Many people were up until 3.30 AM or later, gathering at friends' houses. I managed to talk to a few protesters about their reactions to the election:

FD: "Why are you all here?"

Diva T Williams: "We're here because f**k Trump. The most salient answer for the next 2-4 years."

FD: "What was your reaction to the results of the election?"

Diva: "All my friends sort of converged on my house because I'm already doing activist stuff, so I'm like the nexus when s**t pops off, everyone just runs in my direction. And we were just up until like three in the morning, even though we all had to be at work this morning, sobbing and crying and wishing it weren't so."

Otto Klammer: "Waking up this morning felt like waking up in rubble."

FD: "How do you feel knowing that almost half the people who voted don't really consider your existence to be valid?"

Diva: Well, I've been black for a long time, so zero shock here. I was anticipating this. Because the more that people push against oppression, obviously the oppressors are going to push back, they're not going to just sit there and just let us say 'Black Lives Matter' and have something done about it. I've even heard about a couple of cops getting - shock and awe - indicted for attacking black people lately, okay? I was just saying, I was in Target and they chased my friend into the bathroom saying 'You don't go into that bathroom,' but I went to the manager and that person got in a f**kload of trouble. People who want to maintain the status quo see progress, and the system works for them, so this is their idea of taking that system that was designed for their benefit and using it to their advantage."

Otto: "And talking about how over half the people who were eligible to vote didn't, I think we need to speak a lot more on that because there are Americans who have disabilities who are eligible to vote but can't get there, or not that they can't, but they need a helping hand maybe sometimes, and we don't have outward resources like that, or people like transgender individuals, whose ID doesn't match their voter registry, so they have a hard time at the polls, so yes, there are people who maybe live in their privileged bubbles and don't feel like voting, but there are those who actually need help."

Madison Denise: "And I don't want to be one of those people, but my roommate and I are both from Texas, and we both sent in requests for absentee ballots and we never got them. They sent hers to her house in Houston and I got something completely different and was really confused. So something is really weird about that."

Diva: "Voter suppression is a serious problem right now, even through the primaries. So many people were going out to vote for Bernie Sanders and couldn't, and I was in the position that obviously Hillary isn't quite as much of a f**k festival as Trump is about to be, but the Clintons laid the groundwork for the school to prison pipeline. The prison industrial complex is what it is right now because of the Clintons, full stop, and I can't in good conscience come out cheerfully supporting that, because that's what I've been marching in the streets against for so long. That's what I've been suffering under the heel of for almost 29 years of my existence now, so you have all these people who felt like they had an option and now they feel like they have none. I didn't really have an option on that ballot; I just went in to answer the questions. That's the only thing I felt like I had anything remotely to contribute."

Otto: "I can't shame people who decided not to vote, because I feel like there were valid reasons, and I can't shame people who voted third party either."

Diva: "People need to stop saying 'Oh the third party people, it's their fault, because it would have gone to Clinton'. Most of the third party people were I think Libertarian, which it ultra-conservatives, so those votes would have gone to Trump, not Hillary, so we're still screwed."

Madison: "And I saw people's tweets about how they voted for Harambe or Hennessy, like really? I don't even think it's legal to take pictures in the polls."

Diva: "Yeah, if they figure out who you are and which ballot, they'll throw your ballot out."

Julia Fulbright: "I voted absentee ballot in New York state, and there's no way to check online to see if your absentee ballot made it. There's no way to do that for New York state, at least not that I discovered, because I tried."

Diva: "Which means if there is one, it's not good enough."

Otto: "Exactly, which means there needs to just be some sort of baseline regulations when it comes to voting that I don't see at the moment."

Julia: "My friend never got her absentee ballot so she had to get on the train and go to New York to vote in the afternoon. My sister was voting on her lunch break at work."

Otto: "And we didn't get school off, people didn't get work off for Election Day either."

Diva: "First of all it shouldn't be Election Day, it should be Election Week."

Julia: "Yeah, the fact that we have to do things at all this week, especially given the outcome of the election is a little bit troublesome to me, because I kinda don't feel like I can function, I kinda feel unsafe in the open air, I kinda feel unsafe for the first time since coming out."

Madison: "I just lost like ten followers on Instagram for posting a video of everyone singing."

Julia: "A racist found one of my pictures on Instagram and started commenting all over my profile."

Madison: "I did however have someone from Texas message me and say 'I really envy you, I live in a really conservative state full of ignorant Trump supporters and I really wish I could be with you at that march, you have my full support, be safe and peaceful."

FD: "What was your reaction the state police showing up so quickly?"

Madison: "Well I think that's why everyone split up, because once you have that many people you have to have an ordinance or something."

Diva: "Technically, you have to have a permit, but at the same time we have the right to assemble. So when I was organizing, we would try to get a permit, just as sort of insurance basically, because we had undocumented people and we had people with records, and if the cops show up and tear everything up, you could ruin someone's live, straight up, end of story. They would get deported, they would go to prison. So we tried for the sake of that. And a permit is free, so if you guys want to get one, you can go get one. However, we do have the right to assemble, and whenever we couldn't get a permit, we still met anyway. This I have to say though, is the least obtrusive police have been at any protest I've ever been to. I just walked up and said 'okay, there are a lot of white kids here, I'm not going to get maced today."

Madison: "And honestly, there are a lot of people afraid to leave their homes."

Diva: "Yeah, honestly, I wasn't sure I wanted to today, but I honestly couldn't afford to be missing work like that, but then I couldn't function at work, so I'm here anyway."

Julia: "It's like we have to uplift the voices that have a harder time being heard, and we cannot talk about everything that's happening right now without talking about the fact that this is a product of white supremacy, and that's what I'm really hoping that people don't forget to mention later, when things continue at the State House."

FD: "On that subject, how do you feel about the fact that groups like the KKK are actively celebrating this victory?"

Julia: "Yeah, that is so troubling to me. I don't even have anything intellectual to say about that, I just f**king hate it."

Diva: It was really upsetting to go on Facebook and see a couple of relatives, like grown up, black relatives who are just like 'I'm really upset about this and this is terrible, but I respect the office, so I have to respect the president,' and I'm like 'Excuse you? So you want to go back to the cotton field, is that what you just said?" People didn't respect Obama. There were people calling Michelle a gorilla the whole time."

Julia: "I think we should really get on the music thing. Because last night we had people at our house, a bunch of people, different instruments, and we were going to try to write revolution music. We talked about this in my sociology class: there's a lot of focus on music with a purpose, and for a while I was annoyed at how the professor was talking about modern music, but when this happened everything sort of flipped for me and I got it."

Diva: "You know, I'm old, I'm about to turn 29 in January, I've been through a lot of s**t, I remember 9/11. My name is diva because my father is a musician and he wanted me to have a musical name, and music has been my coping mechanism my entire life, it's where I retreat, it's where I go to, and it's how I f**king stand, and I've felt for my entire life that there has been a dearth of music speaking on the issues that we're dealing with right now, and I'm happy to hear everyone say that your first instinct was to make revolutions. People still sing the songs that Mother Jones did, it's so important, and we need you."

Many thanks to Diva T. Williams, Julia Fulbright, Otto Klammer, and Madison Denise for talking to me and agreeing to be named in this article.

Sources:

https://www.splcenter.org/20160413/trump-effect-im...

http://ktla.com/2016/11/10/ku-klux-klan-to-hold-do...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kkk-fliers-geo..

http://www.wvtm13.com/article/kkk-fliers-distribut..

http://www.projectq.us/atlanta/kkk_fliers_call_atl...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/...