Minneapolis, MN – Two days after Donald Trump was declared the winner in the presidential election, several thousand people poured into the streets of Minneapolis, Nov. 10, to express their outrage and pledging to resist Trump’s entire reactionary agenda. Chants ranged from “We reject the president elect!” and “Not our president!” to chants supporting particular struggles and movements like immigrant rights, Black Lives Matter, Native struggles, environmental struggles, LGBTQ and women's liberation, and more.

The marchers were overwhelmingly young. Bystanders and passing cars responded enthusiastically, with many chanting along with the marchers and some joining and swelling the size of the march. All the speakers at the march emphasized the need to resist Trump’s agenda immediately.

The march first passed through the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, home to a large Somali and East African community. In the last week of the presidential campaign, Donald Trump spoke in Minneapolis and lashed out with threats against the Somali community. The march then went down Franklin Avenue, passing by the Republican Party headquarters at 22nd and Franklin Avenue. Heading back toward Riverside Avenue, marchers suddenly sprinted toward the Highway 94 entrance, flooding past police cars trying to block the entrance. Thousands of people surged onto the highway, shutting down the main artery through the Twin Cities for over an hour, symbolizing that there will not be business as usual for Donald Trump. Marchers held the highway until 9:00 p.m., then decided to leave the highway on the Cedar Avenue exit, returning to the march starting point. Nobody was arrested.

The march’s starting and ending point was outside the University of Minnesota Humphrey School building. It started there in solidarity with an immigrant rights protest that had been previously planned there the same evening by the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC), to protest a speech by Senator Amy Klobuchar due to her inaction on stopping the jailing of immigrant children who cross the border into for-profit ‘family detention centers’. 40 legislators have signed on to a letter asking President Obama to shut down these detention centers, but Klobuchar so far has not. Facing the prospect of a very large protest, at the last minute Klobuchar’s event was moved to McNamara Alumni Center on the other side of the university campus. MIRAC protested outside her speech at McNamara, then also participated as a contingent in the anti-Trump protest.

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