Demonstrators who gathered in front of Oakland City Hall on Wednesday came with the single demand of making officials count every single vote amid one of the tightest presidential elections in the United States.
The Bay Resistance, an assembly of several activist groups, organized the event and had at least 300 protesters. The participants have all been concerned with Trump’s false claims that he has won the presidency and his continuous efforts of invalidating mail-in ballots that have yet to be counted in key swing states.
The groups planned to conduct “escalating actions” around the Bay Area and across the nation if the Republican loses the election and refuses to concede his authority. They also said they would move if third party individuals or groups acted against counting the remaining votes.
An organizer with Californians for Justice, Geordee Mae Corpuz, the participants were very emotional during the demonstrations with all the chaos within the elections. However, she noted it was also the time where residents should be brave enough to stand up and defend their rights.
Corpuz said that a lot of the young individuals she has worked with have only experienced their first voting process this time and have already become disillusioned. The organizer said her colleagues were furious about how the president himself is actively suppressing the votes of his citizens.
The demonstration in Oakland was among dozens of protests on Wednesday in San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The event had around 100 participants who marched downtown, demanding officials to count all legal votes and conduct a peaceful transition of power, KQED reported.
Protesters held at least three different movements in San Francisco on Wednesday with a similar message of having every single vote count. Most of the participants shared the same perspective after Trump’s false claims and baseless accusations that the Democrats rigged the elections.
One demonstrator said Trump’s lawsuits, litigation, and request that the court decide the election were not constitutional. They said that the citizens of the United States had the right to choose their leader.
Another protester said democracy was only effective if all the people were allowed to vote and that they were assured their choices were counted. Many people expect the election to be drawn out but noted they would also continue speaking out about injustice. Indivisible San Francisco’s Charles Nelson said their agenda for the day was to have every vote counted, the NBC Bay Area reported.
Director of the Bay Rising activist collective, Kimi Lee, said demonstrators were filled with anxiety about the results of the election and what could happen. Some individuals have also begun discussing how to stop a coup.
Lee said they expected Trump to claim an early victory despite the vote-counting still being processed. Rally organizers spent several weeks preparing for the movements after the president said voter fraud was rampant.
In San Francisco, nearly 50 demonstrators stormed the outside of Twitter’s headquarters building. The social media platform is Trump’s most frequently used form of communication. The residents said the tech giant should ban the Republican from spreading false news, hate speech, and racism.
Activist Vara Ramakrishnan noted that if she were the one who posted the tweets that President Trump posted, she would immediately be banned and blocked from the platform. She added that being given special treatment just because he was the United States president was not right.
Ramakrishnan expressed her hopes that Joe Biden wins the election and ousts Trump. However, she said the Republican was a crook and that he would most likely refuse to concede power should he lose the presidency, Cal Matters reported.
