So, this happened in Chicago tonight:
Donald Trump has canceled his rally at the UIC Pavilion due to safety concerns.
A speaker came out to the podium and made an announcement.
“Mr. Trump just arrived in Chicago and after meeting with law enforcement has determined that for the safety of all the tens of thousands of people that have gathered in and around the arena, tonight’s rally will be postponed until another date. Thank you very much for you attendance and please go in peace,” he said.
More:
As many as 10,000 people had tickets to attend the rally and at least 7,000 were in the Pavilion at the time of the cancelation. The line still stretched several blocks around the building. A crowd of protesters outside the area swelled to at least 1,000 people.
Protesters outside the Pavilion were loud, but peaceful. Inside the Pavilion, there appeared to be thousands of protesters in attendance, mostly young people and UIC students. Upon the announcement of the cancellation, they began shouting “We stopped Trump! We stopped Trump!”
And:
“It was quite disappointing that they couldn’t cancel because we feel it’s not just offensive to us, the things that he’s spreading, but it’s also something- we feel unsafe here on campus having someone like that here, and his supporters,” says Asa Wahdan, of the UIC Muslim Student Association.
Get this:
Many attendees came from Indiana and Wisconsin, making it a day trip to see the candidate they support. They were disappointed it was canceled.
From the Washington Post‘s account:
Protesters and supporters of Donald Trump clashed in sometimes-violent fashion here and in Chicago on Friday, the latest in an escalating series of confrontations that have come to define the front-runner’s rowdy campaign rallies even as he gets closer to securing the Republican nomination.
In the evening in Chicago, Trump canceled a rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago after brawls broke out at the event site.
More:
Inside the Peabody Opera House in St. Louis earlier in the day, protesters interrupted Trump eight times, prompting catcalls and chants from the crowd as security officers removed them. Scores were injured or arrested in clashes between Trump supporters and critics outside the venue, where thousands had gathered in an overflow area to listen to the event over loudspeakers.
And:
“God! Why do you create fools?” an exasperated Trump supporter said, as he watched a young Latino man yelling at a small group of Trump supporters and flashing his middle fingers.
One more:
The crowd was notified by a loud announcement that the rally had been postponed. The protesters immediately erupted into cheers and chants of “We stopped Trump,” while many Trump supporters stood stunned, many having waited hours to see the candidate. Soon, shoving matches broke out between the two groups, and police tried to break up one scuffle after another. Everyone moved outside, and the crowd grew in numbers and the altercations continued. Five people were arrested, a Chicago police spokesman said.
“You can’t even have a rally in a major city in this country anymore without violence or potential violence,” Trump said in an interview on MSNBC. “I didn’t want to see the real violence, and that’s why I decided to call it off.”
Earlier in the day, at a Trump rally in St. Louis:
Less than 10 minutes after Trump took the stage, as he was in the midst of a complaint about how the media does not portray his rallies as “love-fests,” protestors sprang up from all corners of the room.
Holding court at his podium and flailing his arms, Trump yelled directives as police officers gingerly tried to remove Black Lives Matters protestors. One group disrupted Trump’s speech for nearly 15 minutes, spanning two rows and intertwining their arms to create an impenetrable circle, yelling “STOP THE HATE” and waving signs that read “NOT YOUR LAZY BLACK.”
The corridors of City Hall were a picture of mayhem.
Yesterday I wrote denouncing the air of thuggery around Trump rallies, in particular the old coot in Fayetteville who punched an anti-Trump demonstrator. I stand by that opinion. We cannot have a democracy if people are going to get physically assaulted at a political demonstration. That loudmouth protester was in the process of being removed from the building when that jerk old man sucker-punched him. He was arrested, the old man, and charged. I hope he pays a legal price for that behavior. We cannot have that.
Getting the Chicago news, though, gives me a strongly pro-Trump feeling. These left-wing demonstrators tried to shut down an American presidential candidate’s speech during the campaign — and they succeeded, through an implicit threat of violence. People who support Trump drove hours to hear him talk, and they were denied their constitutional rights by left-wing hotheads who believe that they are so righteous that they don’t have to observe basic civility. You come to a Trump rally and you start flipping people off? You should not be surprised if you get a sock in the face.
What happened tonight in Chicago is why we need Trump, as obnoxious as he is, to keep going. I am not a Trump supporter, and I reject much of his rhetoric. But he has a right to give a speech, even an obnoxious speech, without it being interrupted by demonstrators. All of us do. Trump is revealing how impossible it is to have a normal democracy with the activist left, who think their crying need for “safe spaces” gives them the right to silence their opponents.
No. This political correctness needs to be opposed, and it needs to be opposed with force. I don’t know why the police couldn’t handle this situation, but they had better be on it in the future, because many Americans will not stand for this. What those protesters have done tonight is create a lot more Trump voters out of people who are sick and tired of privileged leftists using thug tactics to silence their opponents.
I would feel exactly the same way if conservative protesters tried to shut down a Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders rally. Protest all you want, but do it outside the venue, or silently inside. Do not silence the speaker, because if you do that, you legitimize your opponents trying to silence the speakers from your side. Thuggish, illiberal tactics like this from the left call forth the same kind of thing from the right. When right-wing white nationalist types show up and make trouble at Democratic rallies, or BLM rallies, and get them cancelled, on what grounds will you on the left have to complain?
For me, it’s all about the mob. I despise the mob. Any mob, which I define as a crowd that acts in force to silence people by intimidation or actual violence. We have seen over the past few months how left-wing mobs on college campuses have gotten away with outrageous things, because men and women in authority on those campuses lacked the guts to stand up for the liberal civic order. This is why I cannot support Black Lives Matter, even though I support its goal of bringing critical attention to police brutality: because they believe that their cause is so righteous that they have the right to stomp over anybody who doesn’t share their vision.
Don’t y’all understand that people like you only feed the Trump beast?
Unlike the liberal New York Daily News — and, no doubt, the rest of the mainstream media — I do not blame Donald Trump for this tonight. I blame the left. You want to protest against Trump? Great — that’s your right as an American. But you do so silently and peaceably. You let the man speak. It’s his right as an American, and it’s the right of the people in the audience to hear his message, however offensive it may be to you, and make up their mind about it.
This has gone too far. When an American presidential candidate has to cancel his rally in a major city because protesters have made it too dangerous, we have a serious problem in this country. It’s infuriating. This is not America. Those disruptive protesters need to be made to understand that this is not how America works.
Keep at it, Black Lives Matter and fellow travelers. You are going to get Trump elected.