![]() In the first week of January I joined the Shaheen Bagh movement as a protestor. Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh was made across several days and nights, over innumerable meals of biryani, warm embraces and tender exchanges. All traces of it were erased and painted over. On 23rd of March, 2020 when the pandemic sent India into lockdown, the state used this as an opportunity to destroy the protest site. Shaheen Bagh, the epicentre of this movement was splashed across newspapers and broadcast on television night after night. Together with the National Register of Citizens it threatened to strip over two hundred million of India’s Muslims of their status as legal citizens. Among them was the Citizenship Amendment Act. No stranger to the politics of hate, they interpreted its sweeping electoral mandate to swiftly pass a suite of laws targeting India’s constitutional commitment to secularism. The Shaheen Bagh protest site that swelled at points to millions, with people joining from all across the country, continued over the next hundred days.Įarlier that summer, the ruling party had regained power with a thumping majority. This spontaneous yet radical act of solidarity went on to become an iconic site of democratic dissent that fuelled over a 120 countrywide sit-in protests. Mostly housewives, the women who had never been involved in a political movement before were protesting a ferocious police crackdown against the students of Jamia, one of India’s premier universities. They had occupied a stretch of road on one of the busiest highways in the capital. Read the full ACLU report, 100 Days of Resistance, here.The Shaheen Bagh movement was born in the eponymous working-class neighbourhood, on a frigid Delhi winter night in 2019, when a small group of Muslim women came out of their homes and sat down in protest. As in all struggles, there have been successes and failures, advances and setbacks, but one thing is clear: The Resistance isn't going anywhere if President Trump continues to violate the Constitution and attack vulnerable communities. Over Donald Trump's first 100 days, the fight to defend core civil liberties and civil rights has occurred in three primary areas: immigration, healthcare, and transgender rights. The man sitting in the Oval Office now understands intimately that there is a large revolt against his dangerous and often unconstitutional policies in the streets, in the courts, and in legislatures across this great country of ours. In fact, a recent Pew Research Center report found that going as far back as Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump has the highest disapproval rating of any president during his first 100 days - by far. Trump came into office with historically low approval ratings, and they basically haven't budged since. And it was in congressional confirmation hearings, most notably Jeff Sessions', as activists let committee members know that many of Trump's cabinet picks had terrible records on civil rights and civil liberties.Ĭivil society's response to the Trump administration combined with the administration's own record of legislative, legal, and political failure has clearly affected the White House. It was in front of the White House when Trump revoked an Obama-era guidance that protected transgender students' right to use the bathroom that corresponds to their authentic selves. It was in town halls across the country as people held Republican members of Congress to account for their promises to repeal Obamacare. Read: Day-By-Day Digest Of President Trump's 100 Days of FailureIt was at our airports nationwide as Trump rolled out his Muslim ban. The Resistance, in other words, is everywhere. It's also intersectional, establishing relationships across class, gender, racial, and even political and party lines, as some conservatives break ranks out of concern about Trump. As Trump's 100th day in office approaches, the mobilization of people in defense of liberty and equality has been broad and deep. The Women's March, however, was just the beginning. All told, an estimated 3 to 5 million people took to the streets in defense of our most fundamental values and in opposition to the newly inaugurated president, who threatened so many of them. ![]() The "counter-inauguration," co-sponsored by the ACLU and many other groups, was likely the single largest protest in American history as sister marches sprung up in cities across America. ![]() ![]() On the morning after Donald Trump's inauguration, more than 500,000 people crowded into the nation's capital for the Women's March on Washington. It only took a day for the people to speak. ![]()
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