A group of students held a protest at CU Boulder’s University Memorial Center fountain Friday afternoon in protest of President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The group comprised several dozen students from UMAS y MEXA, a CU alliance group for Latino students, and CU’s Black Student Alliance.
The group marched from the Center for Community and the Engineering Center to the UMC, carrying signs with messages like “Supporting Trump is supporting white supremacy,” “Trump is a rapist” and “Education is a human right.” Some students carried signs with inspirational quotes from activist leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and others had signs displaying incriminating quotes from members of Trump’s administration, including a reference to attorney general nominee Jeff Session’s statement, “I thought those guys were OK until I learned they smoked pot.”
Once they reached the fountain, students took turns speaking to the group and to a small crowd of onlookers about issues like immigration reform, racism at CU and reasons why they are opposed to the Trump presidency.
“Today marks the first day of how the next four years are going to go,” freshman Edwin Mendoza said during a speech. “We need to make change, and it starts right now.”
“It starts with you, and it starts with you encouraging other people to become involved in this fight,” another student said.
Mendoza said after the protest that in the upcoming months he hopes to see people at CU “become more united.”
“All minorities become more united. We need to make and change, and show that we are here, and we are here to stay.”
Contact CU Independent Copy Editor Carina Julig at carina.julig@colorado.edu.
