Protesters at Trump Rallies: Good or bad? Helpful or unhelpful? Worth the effort or not?

[karynnj]

20. It depends what the protesters do -- Burlington VT reacted well when the alien Trump monster came

Trump, to make a point, made an appearance in Burlington VT. He booked the town's live theatre venue, the Flynn Center, which has about 1,400 seats and proceeded to give out over 20,000 seats. His security people extracted promises from people they allowed in that they were already committed to Trump. Many Republicans who came from other areas --and even across Lake Champlain from NY, waited in line for about 4 hours when they heard the number of "tickets" given on Trump's web site, and were rejected at the door if they said they were undecided.

The protests consisted on many many people, some from groups, some by themselves showed up at City Hall Park across the street. Many carried signs with things like "Take your hate out of our state". The city itself silently backed the protesters by putting papers with giant letters up in the third (top) floor windows that read "we welcome refugees" and left the lights on.

A different kind of protester were people who lied to get into the Flynn and at different points booed things that Trump said. They then left when security ushered them out - some almost dancing when they came out the door into the town. Here, everything was peaceful - though Trump had created a seriously dangerous situation in so drastically giving out too many tickets.

Now, clearly the protesters, in their own city, in the part with candles and signs - sometimes singing songs, sometimes chanting clearly is not a problem. They were exercising their free speech. The protesters in the Flynn is a bit different, but they all left peacefully when asked. I would guess (I do not know anyone who did this) their motive was to prevent Trump from going unchallenged in their town. It was totally in your face that Trump even came there. However, it is true that he paid for the venue and he had a right to speak.

I wish that ALL the protesters had stayed outside with their peaceful signs targeting the real ugliness Trump represented. However, the media covered the entire Trump rally inside - as they seem to do all Trump rallies. The reality is that the media would not have given much coverage to the rallies outside - just the Trump rally. Given that, you might argue that people from the town were using their freedom of speech to say that Burlington did not agree with Trump. However, the truth is that few would agree if a regular performance of anything were disrupted.