Photo Credit: Erin Berge
As protester Laura Valderrama started chanting, “It’s time for peace,” at the Milwaukee Trump rally on Wednesday, Jan. 15, Trump responded with, “one protester, a very weak voice, […] now she’s gone home to mom where she will be in big trouble because I guarantee you that mom voted for Trump.”
Valderrama’s mother, however, had passed away from cancer in 2018.
“I’m still kind of in shock, honestly, because it’s just not something that I ever, ever could have imagined to happen, and obviously, he didn’t know my mom so I don’t take it personally, but [considering] all the things that my family has gone through, I think it just highlights… the con Trump really is,” says Valderrama.
Her mother did not vote for Trump, but instead she had to battle insurance companies after getting laid off because of her cancer diagnosis. To Valderrama, Trump continued to make false promises. “For him to say that I have a weak voice and that I was alone, I am really so happy and proud of the fact that I know that that’s completely the opposite,” says Valderrama.
Valderrama’s fellow protesters included Alexa Safer, a student at UW-Milwaukee; James Brawn, a software developer and business owner; Charlie Ryan, a director of behavioral health in Madison; and others. The group agreed that what they found at the rally was opposite of what they were expecting.
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“A huge thing that I learned that night—granted I went into this thinking, ‘oh my god, we’re crazy, look at us, we’re going to go running right into the whole stronghold of Trump supporters here, and they’re going to tear us apart.’—but something that I really learned that night was to just talk to people and to not demonize them; they are not to be written off. We can have real conversations,” says Brawn.
By starting the wave and having women nearby help get snow off of Ashley and Valderrama’s heads as they entered the stadium, the Bernie supporters began to realize that everyone at the rally could connect on a human level. “Bringing people together is how you win, and that is why you’re going to lose,” says Ryan addressing Trump.
