Is it possible the nutcases of the Bay Area have grown up? Have they realized that riots, strikes and chaos doesn’t change anything. Could this be why the supporters of Kamala are using weed, alcohol and tears—instead of burning down buildings and harming citizens—is the way they are taking the loss of a candidate who wanted to take their freedom and money?
“However, in 2024, the days after Trump’s decisive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris have been very different. A couple dozen people gathered for a vigil at Harvey Milk Plaza on Wednesday night. There was a small demonstration at UC Berkeley, and about 100 people marched through the streets of San José.
Mostly, the response has felt muted.
“I think the main outcome for many people who might have been out protesting is the feeling of being dispirited, the feeling of being humbled, the feeling of being out of touch with a lot of America,” said Jon Krosnick, a political psychologist at Stanford University. “Those aren’t the kinds of emotions that are inspiring a protest.”
Finally they get it—a riot solves nothing.
‘Dispirited’ and ‘Humbled’: The Conspicuous Absence of Bay Area Protests After Trump’s Win
Katie DeBenedetti, KQED, 11/12/24 https://www.kqed.org/news/12014032/dispirited-and-humbled-the-conspicuous-absence-of-bay-area-protests-after-trumps-win
Mass protests across the Bay Area met Donald Trump’s election in 2016. Thousands of people flooded the streets in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and San José. Some of the protests turned violent.
However, in 2024, the days after Trump’s decisive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris have been very different. A couple dozen people gathered for a vigil at Harvey Milk Plaza on Wednesday night. There was a small demonstration at UC Berkeley, and about 100 people marched through the streets of San José.
Mostly, the response has felt muted.
“I think the main outcome for many people who might have been out protesting is the feeling of being dispirited, the feeling of being humbled, the feeling of being out of touch with a lot of America,” said Jon Krosnick, a political psychologist at Stanford University. “Those aren’t the kinds of emotions that are inspiring a protest.”
Many people KQED spoke with said election results left them feeling defeated. Some are unsure what real impact another march will have. And a significant number of the young people who were coming of age during Trump’s first term say they’re disillusioned with the Democratic Party. While there haven’t been mass protests in the streets, all of these contingents say they are looking toward Trump’s second term and preparing to fight it.
Max Flynt, who is a member of the General Union of Palestine Students at San Francisco State, said there wasn’t a possible election outcome that made Trump’s victory worth protesting.
“You can’t ignore the biggest anti-war movement in over half a century internationally, but also across campuses all across the United States, and expect young people to be excited,” he told KQED. “You can’t move to the right on immigration, brag about building Donald Trump’s border wall, prosecuting transnational gangs, demonizing immigrants and expect Democrats and young people to vote for the Democratic Party.”
Pro-Palestinian protesters have been a force on Bay Area college campuses since Israel began its war in Gaza after a Hamas-led attack killed 1,200 people in October 2023. Activists have criticized the Biden administration’s financial support for Israel throughout the war, which has now killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.
Ahead of the presidential election, SF State’s General Union of Palestine Students, along with local pro-Palestine campus organizations, encouraged members not to vote for either Trump or Harris, running a “No more votes for genocide” campaign on social media.
“We will continue to declare our full support for Palestinian liberation and will not be fooled by a two-party system that continues to be complicit and in full support of the genocide in Gaza,” the organization posted on Instagram.
Young people between the ages of 18 and 29 did vote at a significantly lower rate — 42% compared to 52% — than in 2020, according to Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
Even among those who were fans of Harris, Krosnick said the election’s circumstances are different now than they were in 2016. Then, it felt implausible that someone who used inflammatory language like Trump would be elected. There was outrage that he lost the popular vote.
This time, he won the electoral college more handily and is leading in the popular vote by more than a two-point margin. There’s much less shock because he’s held office before. In general, the feeling is more resignation than anger.
Whether those feelings linger or turn into determination and defiance will be an important indicator of how national politics will trend in the near future, Krosnick said.
“If the part of America that supports the Democratic Party becomes deactivated as a result of this, then the momentum of the Republican Party is going to be tremendous in the coming decades,” he said.
Republicans also gained a majority in the Senate, flipping four seats. Control of the House of Representatives has not yet been decided, but Republicans have already picked up two seats from Democrats.
“Protest will be critical for balancing the scales,” Krosnick said, adding that demonstrations will rely on young people to be successful.
In part, it’s easier for young people to take the time, he said. They also haven’t seen the political pendulum swing left and right as many times and, in the past, have usually been less disillusioned with the impact they can make.
“I think a lot more people just are taking their time to kind of process, accept what this means and then move forward,” said Zoe Tweedie, the president of the Stanford University chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
She and Brian Yan, another one of SF State’s General Union of Palestine Students leaders, do believe that young people will activate around Trump’s policies once he is in office.
Yan and Flynt are focused on how the Trump administration handles the war in Gaza. They expect Trump, who has urged Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza, will be less critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I think with Trump in office, this could galvanize people,” Yan said.
They see the second Trump term as an opportunity for Democrats to rally around the pro-Palestine movement and move toward the progressive wing of the party.
“We’re hoping that we see something similar to the attitude around [Black Lives Matter],” Flynt said. “When Donald Trump became president — [creating] the 1776 project, calling BLM terrorists, calling antifa terrorists — all of a sudden, we see Nancy Pelosi wearing a Kente cloth, on her knee, putting her fist up for the Black Lives Matter movement.”
Tweedie expects people to focus less on protest and more on advocacy.
“I think what you’re going to see and what I’m already seeing a lot more of is rather than negative campaigns, positive campaigns,” she said. “The ACLU is investing time into, ‘How can we protect rights that we’re scared we’re going to lose?’ rather than ‘How can we protest against Trump?’”
Students she’s spoken with want to focus on issue-driven organizing efforts. Tweedie believes state-level mutual aid campaigns and legal fights where abortion restrictions, anti-transgender laws and crackdowns on immigration are the most severe will likely lead Democrats’ resistance to whatever the incoming administration chooses to target.
Yan agrees that just because there hasn’t been mass protest on the streets doesn’t mean people aren’t focused on how to face the next four years. One of the biggest questions being considered is: “How do we fight back?”
“Maybe people are thinking it can’t just be big marches through the streets. We have to get organized,” he told KQED. “How do we be more tactful about how to fight back and when? Because the repression is only going to get worse under Trump, and we have to start thinking through, ‘How do we get through that, and how do we keep each other safe?’”
