President Donald Trump's visit to New York on Thursday will be met with protests to "drown out" his planned speech at the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum.
It will be Trump's first visit to his hometown since his January inauguration. In the intervening months, he has "threatened to deport our neighbors, take away our healthcare, reject refugees from our shores, and give even more tax breaks to billionaires," one protest's organizers, Resist Here and the Working Families Party, wrote on Facebook. "Not to mention spend millions of our money to protect Trump Tower."
To express their anger at these developments, the protesters are planning to gather at DeWitt Clinton Park in Manhattan at 2:00pm, a few blocks away from the Intrepid museum, to hold a "joyful Cacerolazo"—a type of protest popular in Latin American countries that involves banging pots, pans, and utensils, the organizers wrote.
"It's a way for people to symbolically drown out Trump's speech," Joe Dinkin, a spokesman for the Working Families Party, told AMNY. "We don't want to allow him to have our city be his backdrop."
May 4 is also an unofficial Star Wars holiday, marked by the slogan "May the 4th be with you." The protesters are encouraged to wear white to honor past civil rights movements and to signal that they are on the "light side" of the force.
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Other demonstrations will take place throughout the city.
The activist group Rise and Resist will hold a rally at West 44th Street and 12th Avenue at 3:00pm, and the New York Immigration Coalition and Immigrant Action Fund are planning a protest at Trump Tower at 6:00pm.
"We condemn Trump and his regime of hatred and discrimination," Rise and Resist wrote.
The immigration groups said, "[W]e're going to remind him and the whole country who these streets belong to, the PEOPLE! Join us as we take over the streets around Trump Tower and make sure he knows what real New York values are about."
Trump will be commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea, a World War II battle between the Japanese Navy and the U.S. and Australian forces. He will also meet with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, whom he infamously lambasted in a February phone call and then told press to not "worry about it."
