Concessions

Concessions

Andrew Vu

I will be joining the walk out. Here are some opinions that I wanted to personally offer. They do not represent anyone’s opinion except mine. They are subjective and could be entirely wrong.

If you do not join us, you are not an inherently bad person. If you entirely disagree with the protest, and support Trump, you are not an inherently bad person. This is not an “us vs. them” political trench warfare battle. If you disagree with us, debate or discuss this with us logically, and eventually we will come to an understanding.

If this happened last year at this time, I’m not sure if I would have joined. I understand why people would not want to miss school for a political statement. Even if the protest did not involve missing school, I understand that some people would prefer not to get tangled in politics. I used to be one of them.

I respect and recognize Trump as a human being. All people deserve to be recognized as people, not subhuman entities.

I find it hard to believe that you can agree or disagree with someone on everything, and this applies to Trump too. I happen to agree with Trump on a few things, such as we should rebuild the country’s infrastructure. I disagree with Trump about most other things.

In my opinion, you should not join us solely because we asked you to come. Only join us if you believe in the cause; we’re not coercing you to go. Also, make sure you know why you’re coming to protest. I would rather that you think this over and decide to not go, rather than to yell “YEAH, SCREW TRUMP! LET’S GO PROTEST!” without actually knowing why you’re protesting.

Of course, many people can show you reasons for why you should protest. Ask some some people around school.

I will not tolerate violent or destructive protests. If people begin to attack Trump supporters or destroy property of Trump supporters, I will either leave or defend the Trump supporters. To be clear, I do not support Trump. However, I believe more strongly that we should not attack them because of their beliefs.