 "US President-elect Donald Trump (Photo: Reuters)")
US civil rights activists vowed to defend hard-fought gains in voting rights and criminal justice during the presidency of Donald Trump, kicking off a week of protests ahead of the Republican’s inauguration.
About 2,000 mostly black protesters ignored steady rain to march and rally near Washington’s Martin Luther King Jr Memorial, as speakers urged them to fight for minority rights and President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law, which Trump has vowed to dismantle.
Al Sharpton, the rally’s organiser and a veteran civil rights leader, said Democrats in Congress needed to be sent a simple message: “Get some backbone.”
“We march in the driving rain because we want the nation to understand that what has been fought for and gained, that you’re going to need more than one election to turn it around,” he said.
The rally drew fewer people than organisers had initially expected, but Sharpton said afterwards he was satisfied with the turnout, given the rain and temperatures hovering just above freezing.
“I really didn’t think we’d get those kind of numbers,” he said in a telephone interview.
Trump, a New York real estate developer, won with a populist platform that included promises to build a wall along the Mexican border, restrict immigration from Muslim countries and dismantle Obamacare.
Among the protesters' chief demands on Saturday was protection for the young undocumented immigrants known as "dreamers" from being deported in case Trump revokes the executive orders President Barack Obama instituted to keep them from being sent back to their countries of origin and which allow them to obtain work permits.
Monica Camacho, an undocumented young woman who came to the US from Mexico in 2002 when she was 7 years old, and who joined the protest to make it clear that despite being afraid, she and others in her situation will keep fighting.
"This is our home. As immigrants, we give a lot to give this country. Our parents brought us here when we were little, and it is also the country of our parents," she said.
"The community is worried, it's scared, but we're going to keep up the struggle anyway. There's always the fear of what can happen but we're sticking together," the young woman said.
His choice of Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican, to become attorney general has raised concern among many on the left that Trump could weaken voting rights for minorities and roll back criminal justice reforms.
“We will march until hell freezes over, and when it does, we will march on the ice,” said Cornell William Brooks, president and chief executive of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
