What?! Trump and Pence go to Atlanta to launch “Black Voices for Trump,” and do it in the city many see as a Black mecca? This was like having a “Jews for Adolf Hitler” group in Nazi Germany. This was not something that could be ignored, or dismissed through ridicule. This was extremely serious. There were Jews who worked with the Nazis back then, the Judenrat. They administered the ghettos the Nazis forced Jewish people to live in, and they picked which Jews were to be sent to the death camps. So the “Black Voice for Trump” needed to be confronted head-on.

Trump had called Chicago “more dangerous than Afghanistan” before a conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and said he could clean the city up in a day by unleashing the police to “go after the bad guys.” Which means unleashing them to target Black and Brown people with more savage terror than the police usually inflict on them. He had earlier called the 5th Congressional district that Atlanta is part of “horrible” and “falling apart.” He had called Baltimore, another mostly Black city, “disgusting” and “rat- and rodent-infested.” He called Africa and Haiti “shithole countries” and said there were “very fine people” among the Nazi and KKK storm troopers who marched in Charlottesville.

In announcing the launch of “Black Voices for Trump,” Trump bragged about how much he has done for Black people. What he has done, and is doing, for Black people and for all of humanity is hammering full-on fascist rule into place in this country. His regime must be driven from power before it can succeed in consolidating its hold on power.

So I headed down to Atlanta, joined by a member of the National Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour, to sound the alarm on this dangerous development and shake people out of their passivity in the face of fascism barreling ahead—and to bring as many of them as possible into the #OutNow movement and the struggle to drive the Trump/Pence regime from power.

Refuse Fascism Atlanta and the #OutNow movement had called for people to come out to the Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC) on Friday, November 8, where Trump was launching his “Black Voices for Trump.” Refuse Fascism Atlanta was bringing a different message to the GWCC: “Trump & Pence Must GO—NOW!” Other groups, including the Georgia Alliance for Social Justice, also called on people to come out in opposition to Trump.

Our mission—to jolt people awake to just how deadly and dangerous Trump’s fascist, white supremacist agenda is, unite with those who were taking a stand again Trump, and organize those outraged by this regime into active participation in the #OUTNOW! movement to drive this fascism regime from power as soon as possible. And the revolutionaries among us were also spreading the real way out of all this madness and horror—revolution and Bob Avakian’s new communism.

Many people felt like Trump coming to their city to launch a group of Black supporters was like a punch to the gut. Just hours after I arrived in Atlanta, the host of Real Talk with Dr. Rashad Richey invited me onto his radio program. This show is on WAOK, arguably the most prominent Black talk radio station in Atlanta. The interview got real right away—go here to listen to and watch a short clip from it.

It’s very important that basic truths about the Trump/Pence regime were being projected to Richey’s audience. Things like this are rarely heard in major media, and they need to be heard as part of awakening and activating growing numbers of people. At the end of the show, Richey made his own pitch for his audience to think about whose interests Trump has shown he has at heart.

Marching and Speaking Out

Then we took it to the streets. People had already begun to gather on the corner in downtown Atlanta where the protest had been called before it was time for it to start. The crowd grew to about 200 people. There were people of different nationalities out in the streets together expressing their hatred of Trump and everything he stood for. Significantly, there were a lot of young people, a number of them students from Georgia State University. Some told us they had skipped class to be out at the protest.

Different groups with different programs had called for people to come out and protest Trump’s appearance. This started off being expressed by different and sometimes competing chants. A lot of it came down to “Impeach and Remove Trump” in contrast to “Trump/Pence Out—NOW.”

Despite the differences, things coalesced into one protest. Early on I got on the mike and said “Black Voices for Trump” are really Black voices for white supremacy, and made the Jews for Hitler comparison, going into why this is true. This had an important impact on the character of the protest. Soon we began to march and took the march from the sidewalk into the streets. By this point, everyone was chanting: “Trump/Pence, OutNow!” We took the march right up to the building where Trump was inside launching their group of Black bootlickers.

While we had been marching, a handful of anti-Trump protesters who had planned on getting into the event but were turned away by security were in the lobby of the building, and went face-to-face with Trump supporters. When some fascists began chanting in support of Trump, the anti-Trump people started shouting “Fuck Trump” and held their ground until they were escorted out by security.

After these people joined us, a member of the Revolution Club got on the mike, and then we followed this up with a speak-out that drew forward and concentrated a lot of anger among a diverse group of people, most of them young. One young woman wearing a “Melt ICE” T-shirt threw down a sharp challenge to all those “who couldn’t come here today.” Among the others speaking out was a young man from Honduras.

The speak-out revealed the depth of feeling and understanding some people do have about the danger of this regime, and a real desire to act on it in a meaningful way. At the same time, it was clear that leadership is needed to give voice to this and help it break through. The numbers of people who came out, while large for a protest in this city, were still far short of what’s needed. But this was a significant outpouring, and it broke into the media in a way that seldom happens here. As part of this coverage, I was interviewed in Atlanta’s main newspaper, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and by the Associated Press, which ran a story that got picked up in papers across the country.