[Al Jazeera] When Olivia Alsip travelled to the capital to protest against the inauguration of right-wing US President Donald Trump...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States...
, she didn't imagine she would end the day behind bars and later face up to 80 years in prison.
Thousands of people journeyed from across the US to Washington, DC, to protest on the first day of Trump's presidency, January 20.
During the swearing-in, Alsip was among the more than 230 protesters enjugged
Please don't kill me!
when officers from the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) blocked off a large area and hauled off nearly everyone.
"I am wondering if my 24th birthday next week will be my last as a free person," she says by telephone from reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown
... home of Al Capone, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel,...
. "I've never in my life had such a painful and stressful experience. There are no words to convey the severity of this."
"Our experience in police custody [that day] was totally dehumanising. We were kettled, treated like animals and denied basic human rights
When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much...
and dignity," she recollects. "People were forced to urinate on the streets and denied water and food."
The arrests came after Black Bloc anarchists and anti-fascists clashed with police. Officers fired rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters.
Anti-Trump chants were occasionally drowned out by the thuds of sound grenades and smoke bombs.
Left behind was broken glass from the windows of cafes, restaurants and banks. Declarations of resistance marked the walls and pavements: "Make racists afraid again," and "F*ck Trump".
Images of a limousine in flames later made it onto television screens and the front pages of news websites around the world.