Protesters last week forced racist thug Donald Trump to close down one of his rallies at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
Trump, the frontrunner to be Republican Party presidential candidate, abandoned his meeting because of a demonstration by thousands outside the arena and hundreds of protesters inside.
It is a massively welcome development.
Trump’s rallies frequently see counter-mobilisations. The Chicago one was different because of the scale of the protest.
Students started organising as soon as the rally was announced. Over 50,000 people signed a petition
calling on the college’s administration to cancel the event.
The protest brought together people who have been involved in Black Lives Matter protests, Bernie Sanders supporters and many others.
Trump was thrown on to the defensive by his defeat in Chicago, but has predictably responded with more threats.
The next day at his rally in Kansas City, Trump was unable to speak for about 15 minutes because of protests. He insisted that the police arrest protesters. “I hope these guys get thrown into a jail,” he said.
“They’ll have to explain to mom and dad why they have a police record and why they can’t get a job.”
Arrested
The cops pepper sprayed demonstrators and arrested several people.
Trump has also defended John McGraw who punched a black demonstrator in North Carolina last week and later said, “He deserved it. The next time we see him, we might have to kill him.”
Trump added that he had asked his team to look into paying McGraw’s legal fees.
Another major anti-Trump protest is scheduled for New York this Saturday, a few hours after anti-racist protesters march in London, Glasgow and Cardiff.
Meanwhile Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic Party nomination received a big boost.
His win in the state of Michigan last week was described by one respected analyst as “one of the greatest shockers in presidential primary history”.
Just days before polls had shown the establishment candidate Hillary Clinton 21 percentage points ahead.
Sanders, who calls himself a socialist, won because he connected with the hatred of the political elite and rising inequality.
He also won the Arab-American vote. This shocked much of the media who believed such voters would not back a Jew.
In Dearborn, whose population is 40 percent Arab-Americans, Sanders secured 7,100 votes to Clinton’s 4,700.
Sanders is partly reflecting the radicalization that was also shown in Chicago. This is of greater long term significance than the Sanders campaign.
The crushing frustration is that instead of giving it further momentum, he is on course to lead it back into the dead end of the Democratic Party.
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