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Trump Fundraiser In Downtown Boston Draws Protest—And Some Support

Protesters rallied outside a Donald Trump fundraiser in Post Office Square Wednesday.
Isaiah Thompson
/
WGBH News
Protesters rallied outside a Donald Trump fundraiser in Post Office Square Wednesday.

A few dozen protesters gathered outside the Langham Hotel in downtown Boston Wednesday in advance of a fundraiser for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.

With shouts of "Dump Trump," and "Trump, You're Fired!"—as well as a somewhat unexpected verse or two of the Woody Guthrie anthem "This Land is Your Land," protesters chanted and waved signs for more than two hours outside the Post Office Square hotel, inside of which Trump was apparently wooing Bay State politicos to raise funds for his cash-strapped campaign.

Among the protesters was Rabbi Jordan Braunig, director of the Initiative for Innovative Community Building at Tufts University, who said that he felt an obligation to show up and show his opposition to Trump.

"As a Bostonian, I want to let Trump know that his style of fear-mongering and bigotry is not welcome in our town," Braunig said. "As a rabbi and as a Jew, I feel like we've seen this before in history, where people call up the worst in people in order to marginalize communities, in order to scapegoat. I can't stand idly by while Muslims and while Latino Americans are made to feel less than American."

Trump did not appear before the crowd himself, and was nowhere to be seen during the event. Shortly after the protest disbanded, around 1 p.m., police blocked off streets to let an escorted motorcade proceed from a side entrance to the hotel.

Emily Norton, president of the Massachusetts Sierra Club, had come to bring an environmental critique of Trump.

"In 2016, to be a climate change denier, as Donald Trump is, is outrageous," Norton said.

Norton also called Trump a "hypocrite."

"When it comes to his own golf course, in Scotland, he is asking for permission from the local government to build a wall, to protect his golf course, against what? Sea level rise — from climate change," she said.

While the chanting and most of the sign-waving at the event was decidedly anti-Trump, Trump supporters turned up here and there—and there seemed to be a significant number of Trump supporters among the many bystanders who gathered to take in the scene during lunch or while passing through downtown. Aside from a few heated exchanges of words, the event was, by and large, calm.

Russell Robins, a general contractor from Lynnfield, said he supports Trump and watched the protest with visible disdain.

"I think they're quite misguided," Robins said. Trump, Robins said, "is actually naming things politicos refuse to talk about, such as the economy, where the debt is going."

"Immigrants, they've been allowed in, obviously," Robins said. "But it's a completely different set of scenarios now, involving immigrants."

Asked what he thought about accusations that Trump is a racist, Robins said: "I don't think it's true in the slightest bit."

Copyright 2016 GBH

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