Thousands of RNC protesters denounce Trump, GOP agenda in Milwaukee

Inside the Fiserv Forum, home to the city’s professional basketball team, the Republican National Convention was kicking off its first day, still reeling after a gunman opened fire at the former president’s Pennsylvania rally on Saturday. The gathering brimmed with defiant energy, as delegates formally nominated Trump and prepared to greet his newly chosen running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance (R).

Outside, about 3,000 people filled a park near the arena, including representatives from more than 100 activist groups, in a long-planned protest of the GOP’s positions. The coalition said in its platform that it opposed Republicans’ “racist and reactionary agenda,” which organizers said threatens the rights of women, the LGBTQ community and immigrants.

The twin events — convention and protest — served as two early tests of how Americans would react to the first assassination attempt of a president or candidate in more than 40 years, which unfolded during what was already one of the darkest and most divided eras in recent memory. The initial indication: On both sides, little seems to have changed.

For Trump supporters, the shooting only increased their resolve, becoming the latest — and largest — grievance to animate a campaign focused on retribution.

Anti-Trump demonstrators, meanwhile, confronted the more delicate task of condemning the man they deem an existential threat to democracy while at the same time decrying the violent act that threatened his life. And the language of protest offered little room for nuance.

Organizers were careful to call out political violence of all stripes, but otherwise they showed few changes in rhetoric.

“Defeating the Republican agenda is a matter of life and death for working and oppressed people,” Kobi Guillory of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization told the crowd of protesters as they prepared to march toward the convention site.

Few speakers mentioned Saturday’s shooting, and demonstration coordinators said it did not impact their plans. It remains more important than ever to oppose the GOP agenda as loudly as possible, they said.

“If we can’t do it now, are we going to do it when it’s “Handmaid’s Tale” time?” said 69-year-old protest attendee Jackie Sparks, referring to Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel set in a totalitarian society. “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Sparks, who drove up from Chicago to march, said both left and right have contributed to the corrosive political discourse, but one side bears much more blame.

“There’s divisive rhetoric on both sides, but the most violent rhetoric has been on the Trump side,” she said.

Christine Neumann-Ortiz, the head of Wisconsin’s largest immigrant rights group, Voces de la Frontera, said the country’s most vulnerable residents are still dealing with dangerous fallout from Trump’s first term in office.

“It is undeniable that Trump’s rhetoric, policies and actions have contributed to a climate of increased violence and hate crimes by white nationalists, especially against people of color,” she said.

Responding to a question about the shooting, Omar Flores, the co-chair of the Coalition to March on the RNC, said, “I think the Republicans are experts on political violence.”

The protest drew attendees from across the country, from Seattle and Los Angeles to Detroit and D.C., ranging in ideology from Democratic die-hards to far-left establishment critics. Many said they had made the trip because the stakes of November’s election have never been higher.

“If I have a message to the American people, it’s: Please stop being apathetic,” said Nadine Seiler, of Waldorf, Md. “I just want people to participate.”

Seiler, an American citizen originally from Trinidad, was wearing a shirt that read, “Stop Project 2025,” referring to the conservative playbook for a second Trump presidency.

Nearby, Jim Schwartzburg held a tie-dye sign denouncing the Republican Party in explicit terms. He traveled to Milwaukee from northern Wisconsin and said he was disappointed at the protest turnout.

“Obviously, the other side cares more,” he said. “And that’s the magic of Trump: He gets people who never got off their couches to come out.”

Other protesters echoed a long-held Democratic anxiety that seemingly everything that has happened in this chaotic presidential campaign only increases Trump’s chances of reelection.

Ranay Blanford, who served 20 years in the Army and was clad in a “Veterans Against Trump” tank top, worried that the shooting will energize Trump’s base, who will see him as “a hero, a martyr.”

At the same time, she said, the attack was “awful, deplorable.”

“We do not do that in America,” she said. “We vote people out, we don’t shoot them.”

As the demonstrators wound their way through downtown Milwaukee, they encountered small groups of counterprotesters, mostly composed of antiabortion activists, holding signs comparing the procedure with domestic violence and murder.

At one point, a handful of counterprotesters shouted into a megaphone that the marchers were going to hell.

“There might be a bullet with your name on it today,” the man leading the calls yelled. “You might not be as blessed as Trump and dodge that bullet. It’s time to get right with God!”

Another held a sign that read “Homo sex is a sin.”

As the march passed, one protester called back: “It’s fun, you should try it!”

Nonetheless, organizers largely succeeded in putting on the “family-friendly” protest they promised. The groups exchanged sharp words, but there were no apparent clashes. Volunteer marshals helped separate the participants when necessary, while the police presence was minimal except for a few officers on foot wearing light blue vests identifying them as members of a community policing team from Columbus. A few more small rallies are planned for the rest of the week.

The demonstration’s coordinators promised a larger turnout next month in Chicago, where the Democratic Party will hold its own nominating convention and protests will focus on Israel’s war in Gaza.

Participants from the left and right said they were unafraid to show up Monday, even after the assassination attempt plunged the country into a new state of unease.

“This is the safest place in America right now, wherever Trump is,” said Dan Gilles, a graduate student in Chicago, who was among the counterprotesters and wore a “Make America Straight Again” hat.

But even as the status quo — and its poisonous political dialogue — seemed destined to prevail, some among the crowd were searching for harmony. One of them was Joshua Hanson, a 52-year-old from Asheville, N.C.

Hanson, a ministry worker, bears a striking resemblance to the Jeff Bridges character from the movie “The Big Lebowski,” and he was wandering around the protest area in a shirt emblazoned with the film’s protagonist, a go-with-the-flow slacker type.

Hanson, who had been driving across the country on his way home from a Grateful Dead concert in Las Vegas, stopped off in Milwaukee to preach the gospel of unity.

“We need healing as a nation. We’re so divided,” he said. “We’re all lost. We’re all hurting. … We just need to come together and see what we can agree upon.”

America, he seemed to be saying, will abide.