Gainesville Protesters Rally at City Hall on Inauguration Day/ Martin Luther King Jr. Day
On January 20, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and President Donald Trump’s inauguration day, Gainesville and Ocala activists gathered outside of city hall to protest the revocation of their rights.
Protesters held banners along the sidewalk and a large caricature of Trump.
Two Gainesville Police Department (GPD) officers patrolled around city hall but didn’t interact with the protesters.
The Gainesville Party for Socialism and Liberation set up the protest, but several activist groups attended.
United Campus Workers of the University of Florida (UF) member Quinton Cooper gave a speech to protesters after some chants.
Cooper said, “When Trump talks about government efficiency, what it means is looting public resources and turning them into sources of profit for billionaires…. People like [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio want war with China. They want war with Iran. They keep funding billions of our tax dollars to fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza against Palestinians.”
Scott Westfald with Ocala for Justice in Palestine (OJP) said it would be a “disaster” if the United States went to war with Iran because he “doubts the United States could win it.”
Westfald said, “It’s good to have a ceasefire, but the Palestinians still need us. Gaza is rubble, and [Israel Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is slobbering to eat a piece of the West Bank just like how he’s taken a piece of Syria.”
President of Mayor’s Counsel for UF graduate students, Derek LaMontagne, raised awareness about UF’s plan to destroy roughly 300 apartments in Maguire Village.
LaMontagne said Maguire village houses people from various walks of life, including veterans and families. LaMontagne said, “This issue is imminent, and it’s urgent because this demolition might happen as soon as next month.”
UF medical student Pat Haley represented UF Students for a National Health Program and spoke on the Democratic Party’s failure to campaign for democratic policies.
Haley said, “Kamala Harris ran with the same neoliberal policies Joe Biden did as healthcare, grocery and gas prices skyrocketed. The Democrats insisted the economy was doing well as defined by the stock market, and she lost to a twice-impeached convicted felon who was ousted in a previous election.”
“How embarrassing,” said a protester.
Spencer Murphy with the Democratic Socialists for America (DSA) said, “I’m real pissed off because the Democratic Party could’ve prevented this entire thing…. Instead of offering the working class of America things that can uplift their material condition, they said, ‘To hell with that,’ and decided it was more important to bomb children in Palestine.”
A poll by the Middle East Institute for Understanding (MEIU) found that 29% of people who voted for Biden in 2020 withheld their vote from Harris in 2024 because of the Biden administration’s support for Israel.
MEIU reports, “The Democratic Party needs to come to terms with the real reasons it lost the presidency in November, including that after over a year of unprecedented protests and calls for Biden to stop sending weapons to Israel, party leadership failed to listen to its own voters, who overwhelmingly want their government to end its complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”
Protesters seemed hopeful that the demonstration will lead to future actions.
The next scheduled protest in Gainesville will be held outside the County Administration Building at 5 p.m. on January 28 to campaign for the closure of Florence Dump.
