JMU Students to Protest RPV Convention Because Trump… Isn’t Coming

An erroneous Washington Post article highlighting Donald Trump’s poor delegate selections performances at state conventions around the country thus far sent the James Madison University community into a tizzy this week. WaPo reported a rumor that Donald Trump intended to attend the 2016 RPV Convention as a personal gesture toward delegates in an attempt to persuade elected delegates for his support.

Instantly, a number of JMU students announced their decision to protest Donald Trump’s appearance. This protest quickly swelled in interest, as local news station WHSV interviewed the protest’s organizers.

Natasha Yaqub, a graduating JMU senior, said, “as a Muslim American, I’ve personally felt the anger that can come from Donald Trump’s policies in his campaign platform. And when I saw that he was coming to J-M-U, I thought this was a perfect opportunity to mobilize myself and my fellow peers at J-M-U.”

Catherine Antosh, another graduating senior, added, “When the news broke on Washington Post this (Monday) morning that Trump would be visiting the campus, we really wanted to mobilize all the people that were angry about this into one unified forum to actually have a unified community speaking out against Trump.”

The Facebook event ‘Protest Against Trump at JMU’ has more than 800 people attending, and in the interim between Monday and Tuesday, the organizers and attendees engaged in conversation specifying that they were not politically protesting, or supporting one party/candidate over the other, but rather protesting against Trump himself, and his candidacy.

Of course, that all was blown to bits yesterday when RPV let it be known that media reports had always been wrong, and they confirmed with the Trump campaign that they would not be attending. Trump was never scheduled to attend of course, but once RPV confirmed, they reported out to the media that he wasn’t coming, and we’re on to Saturday.

Over and done with, right?

Well, with more 800 people attending, the organizers have decided they couldn’t just cancel it, there was too much interest!

… due to the large amount of interest by the JMU student body we did not want to simply cancel our protest because Trump decided to cancel his appearance. We have been extremely respectful to people and their individual views and have publicized this in all of our posts. As we have repeatedly stated this will be a peaceful protest and we are not looking to disrupt anything. However, we do have the right to exercise our first amendment beyond posting a FB status and this provides us with a perfect opportunity to do so. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and nobody will 100% agree on one way to do something. We have been working with other activists on campus to establish our protest platform which will be released later tonight which can help provide further details into our cause and guidelines for our protest. We want to send a clear message that we do not want Trump as the nominee and support those delegates who oppose him.

…
Despite this change, we still intend to protest at the RPV Convention to take a stand against Trump as a presidential candidate. The reason for our protest was always about countering Trump’s hateful platform and as this convention could be instrumental in deciding the nomination process, we still think there is an opportunity to take a stand.

So JMU students are now protesting at the convention, but not protesting the actual convention, because they don’t support Trump; so even though Trump won’t be there, and even though the convention will have no impact on his candidacy, and even though the Convention only selects 3 of the 50+ national delegates, and even though 95% of delegates are selected at the district conventions, and even though Trump’s platform won’t be changed by events at the Convention, and even though Virginia already voted and Trump already won, and even though Trump won 5 more states last night, they’re still taking a stand against Trump as a presidential candidate…2 months after Virginia voted.

Got it?

So when you arrive Saturday morning, you should expect to see some JMU student protestors and signs on the sidewalk in front of the Convocation Center. They do intend a silent, peaceful protest. Regardless of their naivety, please treat them with respect. If you somehow can’t do that, then ignore them.