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Crowds flocked to the intersection of Wacker Drive and Wabash Avenue to protest Trump’s visit to Chicago Monday.
Trump had not visited Chicago since 2016, when he was forced to cancel a scheduled rally at University of Illinois at Chicago due to safety concerns.
Rallies organized by various organizations — such as Indivisible Chicago, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, UIC Students for a Democratic Society and others — came together before the Trump Hotel to rally against his visit.
Attendees were there speaking out on a variety of issues, representing different perspectives on the best path forward for the American government.
“I’m here as an individual to speak up for impeachment,” said Liz Albert, who came to protest from Wheaton, Illinois. “There’s so much that this President is just tearing down in our country and turning us into a laughingstock… I think we should be out in the streets every night like Hong Kong,” she said.
David McKirnan, who attended the protest with Indivisible Chicago, said that he would prefer if impeachment didn’t happen.
“I actually prefer to see him voted out. I think that once he started trying to get the president of Ukraine to interfere in the American election…Nancy Pelosi had to call for impeachment,” McKirnan said, “but I would rather that she not have done that, and that he had been voted out in 2020, so that things proceed in an orderly, democratic fashion.”
However, a strong dislike of the for the president and his actions served as the uniting factor among all protesters.
“I hate Donald Trump. I did not fight World War II for that son of a b–ch,” said Ahamed Jaeoe, a veteran attending the march.