Protesters march to and from the Bryce Jordan Center shouting progressive talking points/slogans before former President Donald Trump's rally in State College, Pa., Oct. 26, 2024.
Posted on 10/27/2024 3:52:31 AM PDT by lightman
As the temperature dropped into the 50s in central Pennsylvania Saturday, things were heating up in the final push to the November 5 election.
Thus was the case in State College as former President Donald Trump made the first of two possible stops at Penn State. His presence invited challenge from two grassroots organizations and a smattering of others on campus.
Around 50 protesters with signs featuring progressive rhetoric marched up University Drive and wrapped around the Bryce Jordan Center onto Curtin Road, loudly decrying racism, fascism and the excesses of capitalism.
“Dare to struggle, dare to win… Make racists afraid again!” the crowd chanted among other phrases such as “Make racists shut up again!” and “Run MAGA out of town!”
The march drew heckling from those in line hoping to get into the overbooked Trump rally.
“Dick Cheney loves you guys!” one bystander chanted back at the group. Others mocked the group as delusional, mentally ill or “woke”.
Donald Trump campaigns in State College, Pa. Some Trump supporters seized the media attention as their own chance at the limelight and strutted out in front of the protesters — and cameras — to dance around. One woman waved a cardboard mask of Donald Trump in front of the crowd.
After the group marched Curtin Road to the end of the line, reaching to the security checkpoint into the center, they bounded back and marched another loop or two.
The protest was mostly peaceful, with one exception: A brief altercation between several protesters and a Penn State junior who identified himself as “Honj”.
The scuffle broke out as the protesters doubled back onto Curtin Road, back toward University Drive. Honj said a protester grabbed at his MAGA flag, while one masked protester later said Honj was pushing against the posters with the flag. Several more masked protesters feigned ignorance of the event that unfolded in front of them.
“We’re working people. We never planned to engage in any kind of physical violence — we’re just here to show up and take space,” that organizer said. “But we believe in self-defense. This is America — Whomever gets attacked, they have a right to defend themselves. But we don’t initiate.”
“It’s (expletive), it’s mental illness,” Honj later told a student reporter. “It’s time to take our country back.”
After doing two loops in front of the Bryce Jordan Center, the protesters departed down Curtin Road past a few undergraduates playing pickleball outside the Wagner Building — which houses the Penn State Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, including the Air Force, Army and Navy ROTC.
The student committee organizer said places like the Wagner building turn Penn State students into the next general of “war criminals”.
“It’s blood money. We can’t be having that (on our campus),” the organizer said. “They send our poor children out to fight rich people’s wars.”
Organizers said they put the protest together in two days. They bring in new members through word of mouth and place them in new member cohort programs, giving training sessions in the groups’ principles. They teach security and defense, and how to talk about history and political theory — all with the goal of having a “disciplined and highly organized formation.”
Indeed, as reporters sought interview opportunities with members of the group, one or two masked individuals would appear nearby. If strangers the group didn’t recognize approached too quickly, a group of six members would immediately form a semi-circle around them, throwing words like “de-escalate” around to dissuade violent interference.
The Student Committee for Defense and Solidarity and People’s Defense Front were the most prominent group of protesters, but they weren’t the only group.
Other protesters from the community formed their own groups and held up their own signs throughout the afternoon. One cluster set up a station at the corner of University Drive and Curtin Road to show support for Democrat candidates Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
Another group of students formed near the entrance to the Bryce Jordan Center, where Trump supporters waiting in line and heckled back and forth with them.
Penn State Trustee Jay Paterno stopped by and unzipped a Penn State windbreaker to show a few protesters he, too, was wearing a Harris and Walz 2024 shirt.
He declined an interview, saying he was only on his daytime walk, didn’t realize what was going on and didn’t want to be involved.
Paterno unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party nomination for lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania in 2014.
Protesters march to and from the Bryce Jordan Center shouting progressive talking points/slogans before former President Donald Trump's rally in State College, Pa., Oct. 26, 2024.
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They live among us.
They breed.
They VOTE.
Do you hear yourself?
Useless idiots that are the definition of racist and fascist.
And a number of Branch Covidians.
Remember preppy students in the 50s?
oh the irony or the blindness or the stupidity
Antifa tactics. Those domestic terrorists are behind this. Sooner or later they are going to have to be dealt with decisively.
Around 50 protesters
All of 50, huh...
By all means, lets listen to the idiots...
/s
Typical “press” report - spotlight the 50 weirdos and ignore the thousands who turned out for Trump.
Those are NOT students
just the Usual under and Unemployed Losers found in any college town .
So the DNC reporter needs to be replaced by AI .
...which is why we're covering our faces & wearing masks...
I agree. Antifa has to be dealt with severely. Wearing masks, dressed in black, and carrying backpacks should put a target on their back. Arrest and detain for the most minor of code violations from the very start of their BS.
Unfortunately, they are protected by local Politians who hire and support them. That’s another thing, go after those that fund and support this BS.
Looked like ten thousand Penn State students fired up for Trump.
So they report on the fifty malcontents. Typical.
They look like a bunch of foreigners. In a few months, they will be expelled from Penn State and deported.
It figures that Jay “Fredo” Paterno is a Rat. The guy could never find a job anywhere without his mother’s assistance. /spit
Spoiled kids .. raised by parents who had everything. There is no telling these kids anything.. they “know it all”. Unless they somehow find themselves, they have no idea they are wrong, misled, lied to. I pity them, along with hoping they get a message from above, which would change them forever.
It’s a shame to see the best years of youth, spent on waste and nothing. It has to be miserable.. thinking they are the only ones who knows anything.
My son, had a vision before he died, he experienced heaven and saw loved ones who were there. He came back for a year.. a changed man. Truth .. absolute truth, fills in all the gaps and holes of what we thought we knew.
"around" 50 protestors couldn't block the front door of the Bryce Jorden Center, a building located on a parcel the size of a city block.
“But we don’t initiate.”“
Said the mask wearing guy.
Imagine how the parents must feel that they spend that kind of money to PSU to have their kids indoctrinated instead of learning how to think critically. Imagine their surprise when their little Maoists come home for thanksgiving and the $h!t they spew. DJT is the only president in recent years who didn’t promote war and actively sought to end our foreign engagements.
could you imagine if the story was the same except it was a Harris Walz visit? The MSM would be all over it and declaring it more evidence of the MAGA violence, a continuation of J6 and more evidence of the facist MAGA movement.
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