Despite what the Trump Administration wants us to believe, Trump and the GOP do not have a mandate. Trump did not receive a majority of the votes. He lost the popular vote by over 2 million votes. Of the 136,628,459 voters in 2016, Trump received 62,979,363 votes ( (46% of the popular vote and 307 electoral college). There were an estimated 231,556,622 people eligible to vote in the 2016 election. Of those, 40% of eligible people did not even vote. This means that Trump received support of just over 25% of the eligible voters. The analyses around the election among them White supremacy, Russian interference, and voter suppression have been written about elsewhere.
On Friday and Saturday, we witnessed millions of people demonstrating and marching in solidarity in the Festival of Resistance and Women’s March. This type of action is important to democracy. The voices of the people must be heard. If not through the electoral process, then in the streets. Yet, we have a growing movement to silence voices of the people (especially those in opposition to the police and government). Over the last several years, we have seen propaganda that frames political protests and demonstrations as riots. The media and government consistently frame Black Lives Matter and No Dakota Access Pipeline (#noDAPL) protests as riots. This serves to silence opposition and spark fear in citizens.
We are witnessing bills being introduced (and thankfully some defeated) that threaten protections and criminalize protests and acts of civil disobedience.
We are also reading about the censoring of federal agencies. The Environmental Protection Agency and Depts. of Agriculture and Interior have reportedly been told to cease communication with the public including the use of social media.
So, we have an Administration that refuses to acknowledge that it doesn’t have the support of a majority of voters and ruling through Executive Order and memoranda with law makers who are actively trying to silence and criminalize the voices of the people.
iamericka 