The Trump rally at the First Niagara Center on Monday, April 18, thrust Buffalo into the national spotlight, when area protesters disrupted one of the biggest rallies of Trump’s campaign.

In Hate Is Not Welcome Here by George Zornick in The Nation (April 19, 2016), interviews several of the protesters. Here are excerpts, but I recommend reading the entire article: 

"Within one minute of Trump coming on stage, as he was bragging about making a billion-dollar offer for the Buffalo Bills in 2014, around 15 protesters locked arms and started chanting “No Trump, no KKK, no racist USA!” They locked arms and dropped to the floor, creating a difficult task for momentarily befuddled security staff.

"Only two of the protesters were actually arrested, for reasons that remain unclear. Whitney Yax, a protester who was not arrested, spoke with The Nation outside central booking in downtown Buffalo as she waited for her friends to be released. “We noticed up to this point that other protests, when they were asked to leave, they left at some point. We thought: let’s refuse to leave and see how long we can make it last,” she said. “For me, Trump is coming here to Buffalo, to my city, where I was born and raised. He’s continuing to build his movement for racism, for violence, for white supremacy. I want to do whatever I can for as long as it takes to disrupt that.”

"All of the protesters arrested inside the arena were white. But their larger activist group is definitely not: It’s just that the non-white members decided to demonstrate outside the arena instead of coming inside to disrupt Trump’s speech."

"Instead, the black activists outside planned to sit down in front of the light-rail train leaving the arena after the rally. Police had forbidden parking within a mile of the First Niagara Center, so the train was the only way out for most of the attendees."

“We were going to block the train so that Trump’s supporters couldn’t go home, to represent the fact that we can’t rest as people of color in the sixth-most segregated city in the country. We were going to sit and not let them go home until we could rest,” said Shaketa Redden. The plan was foiled by a strong Buffalo police presence that lined the train line with wooden batons and pushed protesters away from the tracks."

 “I think the generation has shifted a bit. We’re constantly learning,” said Caitlin Blue, one of the activists, after Trump’s rally. “If we don’t do something about it, if we don’t take this seriously, then nothing is ever going to change. We’re putting our action to the words that we have. We need to stand up for people of color. We need to show that they are welcome here. We need to show that hate is not welcome here.”

In this racially divided city, listed as the seventh poorest in the nation, the peaceful nature of the Trump Rally protests is frankly remarkable. The news is: Hate is Not Welcome Here. And we can make this statement without resorting to violence. Amen.