Above Photo: From baltimorepostexaminer.com
More than 300 gathered Saturday at the Edward J. Garmatz’s Federal Courthouse in Baltimore to protest President Donald J. Trump’s recent torrent of Executive Orders.
The building is located at 101 W. Lombard Street in the downtown area, not far from the Inner Harbor.
Speaker after speaker roundly denounced Trump for his executive actions concerning a wide array of human rights and economic issues, such as: withdrawing federal funding for sanctuary cities, banning Muslim immigrants, building a Border Wall with Mexico, crippling Obamacare and restarting the Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines. He has also threatened to launch a federal probe of supposed voter fraud in last year’s presidential election because he thought he should have gotten more votes.
Trump initially had proposed a “20 percent tariff on Mexican imports,” to help pay the costs for building the mega-wall. Later in the week, he backed off and said that was just “one of many” possibilities.
Meanwhile, as if to set the stage for much worst to come, six journalists were arrested at Trump’s inauguration on January 20th and charged with “felony rioting.” They can face sentences up to ten years in the slammer.
Activist Steven Ceci said it was important for people to take a stand against “hatred, the anti-immigrant policies of Trump, and to block the pipelines.” He also praised students from U.B. and MICA for helping to organized the event. Ceci said it was a “joint effort.” He called for a “people’s movement” to rise up and take on Trump and his gang.
Another speaker cautioned that the repeal of Obamacare may cost as many as “50,000 lives in America.”
Soon a chant went up, with the 300-plus protesters joining in, “Say No to Trump! No to the KKK! No to a Fascist USA!”
It’s only fair to point out, however, that not everybody has been offended by all of Trump’s executive orders. His sinking of the yucky TPP Treaty has drawn praise from two leading members of organized labor. Richard Trumka, chief of the AFL-CIO, called the president’s actions “a good first step to building trade policies that benefit workers.” James P. Hoffa, the Teamsters’ boss, labeled it a positive move to fixing “thirty years of bad trade policies.”
Trump’s killing the TPP was also a kick in the rear to the wily Globalist schemers. One economic expert, Jeff Faux, sees TPP, like the repulsive NAFTA, as a “device for capitalists to drive down the wages of American workers.”
Activist Lee Patterson said it is long past the time for the American people to dump the tired, old “two-party system and to replace it with a socialist one that will work for all the people and not just the rich.” He added that Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party loser, was just another “Lady MacBeth!”
Back to Trump: he even commented on Chicago’s draconian scene of carnage. Last year, it had “762 murders and 4,300 shooting victims.”
Trump said that “federal intervention” might be needed to remedy this ongoing lethal situation. This comment didn’t go over well with some, including Chicago’s ostracized Mayor, Rahm Emanuel. Many locals, however, especially in the Black Community, consider Emanuel to be a “hollow man.” There is an ongoing effort to have him “recalled from office.”
At press time, Trump had directed the office of Homeland Security to make public a weekly list of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants.
After about an hour of speeches, Ceci called for the activists to march around the block, carrying their banners and posters, making a few symbolic stops along the way.
It’s clear, after the hugely successful Women’s March on Washington, on January 21, and the massive solidarity rallies in support of it around the nation, that a progressive base is slowly emerging in this country. If it does, then the tepid Liberal Democrats in the Congress, such as Sen. Charles Schumer of New York – (he pushed legislation in the 90s calling for “secret trials based on secret evidence”) – and the former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California – (she regularly voted to fund the endless wars) – will have two choices: Lead or get out of the way.
Notice for the record: when President Trump was running for office, he ran his campaign by tweeting. Now, that he’s running the government, he does so by barking out executive orders!
The spirited rally/march was peaceful. It began at 2 pm and lasted till around 4 p.m. To learn more, click here.
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