Demonstrators across the United States planned to take to the streets for a fifth straight day yesterday to protest the election of Donald Trump, as the president-elect sparred on social media with one of the nation’s largest newspapers.
Protests were scheduled for yesterday afternoon in New York City and Oakland, California, according to online announcements.
Thousands in several cities have demonstrated since the results from Tuesday’s election showed Trump lost the popular tally but gained enough votes in the 538-person Electoral College to win the presidency, surprising the world.
Largely peaceful demonstrators have decried Trump’s campaign promises to restrict immigration and register Muslims, as well as allegations the former reality-TV star sexually abused women.
Dozens have been arrested and a handful of police injured.
Chanting “not my president” and “love trumps hate” people marched in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere on Saturday, saying Trump threatens their civil and human rights.
Civil rights groups have monitored violence against US minorities since Trump’s win, citing reports of attacks on women in Islamic head scarves, of racist graffiti and of bullying of immigrant children. They have called on Trump to denounce the attacks.
Trump, a Republican, resumed his complaints against the media on Sunday on Twitter, attacking the New York Times for coverage that he said was “very poor and highly inaccurate”.
“The @nytimes sent a letter to their subscribers apologising for their BAD coverage of me.
I wonder if it will change – doubt it?” Trump wrote.
The newspaper published a letter in yesterday’s editions from publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Dean Baquet, not apologising, but thanking readers for their loyalty and asking how news outlets underestimated Trump’s support.
The Times plans to “hold power to account, impartially and unflinchingly” during the Trump presidency, they wrote.
Organisers of the weekend protests said they wanted to build on momentum after several nights of unrest triggered by the real-estate mogul’s surprise win.
Police in Portland, Oregon, where a protester was shot but not seriously injured early on Saturday, said they arrested more than 20 people late Saturday after protesters tossed burning flares and bottles at them and refused orders to disperse.
In New York, several thousand protesters marched peacefully up Fifth Avenue before filling the streets at the foot of Trump Tower, the president-elect’s skyscraper home.