As she watched Donald Trump’s helicopter lift away from the White House on Wednesday morning, Nadine Seiler said, she gave it the finger.
“I’ve been protesting him for four years,” the 55-year-old said. “I can exhale now that he’s gone.”
Seiler was standing in Black Lives Matter Plaza, outside the heavily barricaded White House, wearing an outfit that captured the arc of the last four years of protest. She had donned a pink knit pussy hat, a symbol of the Women’s March, the first major demonstration of Trump’s tenure, and a face mask painted with the words “Madam VP”, in honor of the country’s first Black, south Asian and female vice-president, who would be inaugurated later that day.
“I can’t let my guard down,” she added. “His supporters are going to be terrorizing America for the next four years.”
Even as he left Washington, Seiler said, Trump was “giving them dog whistles”, telling supporters their movement was not over.
Still, across an eerily quiet Washington, with streets blocked with fences and checkpoints, and 25,000 national guard troops – more than the number of US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq combined – on patrol, local residents said they felt tentatively hopeful.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
