"Shutting Down Donald Trump’s Rallies Isn’t the Way To Defeat Him"

"Many Trump opponents, from petition signers trying to deny Trump use of the venue to protesters at the rally, wanted to stop Trump from speaking. That’s always a tempting when someone is saying things as stupid and insulting as Trump does on a regular basis.

But it’s the wrong response. Progressives should try to use such an event to communicate a counter-message to the large audience available, stretching far beyond Trump fans. That message is, first of all, that Trump—as a leader and through implementation of his ideas—would be bad for you and bad for the country. Second, there are better choices for leaders and better ways of identifying the real problems of the country and their solutions (taxing rich people like Trump more and more humanely adopt a steady flow of immigrants, just to start)...

the main goal of the protesters should not be to silence him, but to exercise political jiu-jitsu that takes advantage of his notoriety to communicate the progressive counter-message, a message that includes the strong support of free speech, equality, democracy and other values of both the left and of American culture as a whole. The left should not embrace an approach that could be seen as mimicking in any way Trump’s hostility to free speech and incitement to violence or suppression of opponents."

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18990/donald-trump-rally-chicago-shutdown

I have this negative reaction to news about these anti-Trump shut-down-the-rally protests. I just feel like it's not the productive way to respond; it's reactive and it feels sort of... entitled? Like, "I don't want for this to be happening, so I am going to try to make it not be happening".

There are real reasons why Trump rallies are happening, why people travel hundreds of miles and outfit themselves in Trump gear and get pumped up. One of those reasons: A lot of people feel silenced by the dominant political powers in this country. They are excited to finally have a voice.

Shutting down rallies sort of says "I don't want to engage with your realities or your reasons or your lives, I have decided that I don't like this and I am going to try to stop it". Shutting down rallies says "shut up!" to silenced people.

Always, always, always the best way to address this would be to communicate, to have real dialogues with people, to investigate the fear and anger, to explore the differences in perspective. I don't want to do it, because there is a lot of racism going on in that dynamic and I don't know if a cross-race dialogue would be productive, so I think it's all these young white people who are in a position to be able to really start talking.

Shutting down Trump won't make his supporters' problems go away, and if we claim to care about social justice we have to care about their problems too. Right now, it seems like people are just trying to go back to a time when we didn't have to think about the rural Midwest.