Trump Ban Protest in Irvine

On January 31, a protest was held in front of the Irvine office of Rep. Mimi Walters (R-CA) against President Trump and his travel ban. Walters represents the Irvine district. It wasn’t much as demonstrations go. There were maybe 75 people, including a few Muslims. They were of all ages. As I stood around watching and listening to poetry recitals (“Hey hey, Ho Ho. Donald Trump has got to go”) one of the protest leaders (holding a bull horn) handed me a notice announcing a meeting of the Democratic Socialists of America, Orange County. At one point, a lady walked through the crowd showing people the home address of Paul Ryan (D-WI) in Wisconsin on her cell phone and urging people to write to him not to cut out Planned Parenthood funding. People were copying it on their cell phones. So did I. I don’t want to show it here until someone can show me how to blur out the address.

Almost all of the people were well behaved, but I noticed there were two young men off to the side, one of whom was holding a poster which read, “Donald Trump is my hero”. His friend was being confronted by a middle aged man who was irate and swearing at him. By the time I got my video camera out, he had somewhat calmed down and walked away. The young man kept his cool as did his friend with the poster.

So I walked over to the young man holding the poster and asked him if anyone was giving him any problems. He said that one older woman had gotten in his face and tried to grab the poster away from him. I asked him if I could interview him on video, and he complied.

While I was talking to the young man, the aforementioned woman walked past and said, “I see you put your sign down” in a not so friendly manner.

As I left, the man with the bull horn was urging the crowd to show up at the UC Irvine flagpoles for a vigil that evening. So I am going to assume here that this protest and the later one at UCI were at least partially organized by the Democratic Socialists of America/Orange County.

All in all, it was just another day at the office (of Mimi Walters).