Photos: Protest at Trump and Christie Event in Lawrence Attracts Several Hundred People
About 500 people attended a rally in Lawrenceville Thursday to protest presidential candidate Donald Trump’s visit to the National Guard Armory.
Protesters chanted slogans on and off for a few hours, including chants like “Dump Christie, dump Trump”, “Hate won’t make us great,” and “Choose love, not hate.”
The protests were mostly peaceful. A few Trump supporters tried to antagonize the protesters, including one who ran past the group with a large Trump flag yelling obscenities. But others chatted with the protesters and calmly debated political issues.
Protesters were allowed to gather in a park across the street from the armory on Eggert Crossing Road, and had to park in the lot there or find side streets to park on. Rider University and the Lawrence Intermediate School roads were blockaded to keep protesters out.
A few vendors milled around the armory area hawking pro-Trump and anti-Hillary shirts, masks, hats and buttons. Others sold pretzels and bottled water.
Trump’s visit to the Garden State Thursday marked his first appearance at a New Jersey event this campaign season. He appeared alongside Gov. Chris Christie to help the governor raise funds to erase his presidential campaign debt. Tickets to the event started at $200.
The protest was organized by Martha Friend, a teacher in the Princeton Public Schools. Friend was protesting on her own time after school as a citizen. One Trump supporter at the rally said he was going to get her fired for organizing the protest.
Several representatives from area labor unions attended the protest and criticized Trump for opposing a minimum wage hike and saying wages are already too high.
“The middle class is being squeezed and an unhealthy and unsustainable gap between the rich and the rest of us continues to grow. And Trump and Christie are pushing ‘solutions’ that would only make things worse,” said President Stuart Appelbaum of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
“They are wrong in not wanting to raise the minimum wage to anything approaching $15 an hour,” Appelbaum said. “They would rather keep millions of people earning poverty wages than mandate a fair, livable wage. They are wrong in opposing paid sick leave for most workers. Workers desperately need paid sick leave so they don’t have to choose between losing a day’s pay when they or a loved one are sick. And Trump and Christie are wrong in attacking labor unions.”
Thanks for the report. Glad it was peaceful and civilized. I wish I could’ve been there.
It would be interesting to know how many Trump supporters were at the event. The balance, supporters v protestors.
Highly Biased reporting. As I left the event, I was confronted and screamed at by a group of four protesters who were clinging to the fence, trying to grab me as I walked past towards the exit where the police were. The majority of the people at the event remained calm and civilized. Also, the tickets started at $25, not $200.
This is very biased article. Just look at the photos. Someone would make a conclusion that there was a massive protest against Trump.
Eyeballed(?) number of 500 protesters and no word about 1000+ Trump supporters attending the event.
At the end, the Trump protesters were outnumbered by Trump supporters.
I am not a Trump supporter. Please retract that. I was asking questions.
A very biased article indeed, but I don’t understand why people are mad about the pictures, the event was inside of the armory, so what pictures were to be taken. Another issue is the people in the trump trucks trying to antagonize everyone at a peaceful protest. Also, most of the kids that showed up from the high school don’t know a thing about politics, I asked a few of them why they were there, and 1 out of the 4 I asked said its because they don’t like him
These groups always use children as pawns, they are the ones who disrupted the Governor’s Town Halls !
I really enjoyed the photos of the protestors, and hearing how it went. I’m relieved that there were no incidents reported. The slogans on the posters tickled me. Also glad that Trump got to have his rally without disruption. Both sides appear to have done a good job (and police too). Thank you, Planet Princeton.
Love the teacher’s sign. Perfect penmanship & way too long.
Funny, I see the Working Families Coalition and NJ Citizen Action, you have to wonder why they bring their own signs, they were both started and funded by the unions !
I wonder if they dragged the Better Choices for NJ coalition that NJ Working families Controls ?
Or Maybe NJ Policy Perspective who they also support and who lends leadership to the Better Choices for NJ Coalition ?
I’ve actually seen articles where they quoted each one of these members of the HYDRA separately !
They obviously have all these names so they can fool the public.