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A crowd of several thousand anti-Trump protesters gathered at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on Thursday night, then took to Flatbush Avenue for a peaceful march to the Prospect Park West home of New York Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer.
As the group made their way to Mr. Schumer’s building, protesters chanted “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA,” accompanied by the beats of drummers and percussionists.
Several people in the crowd said they were pressured into venturing out into the cold night after seeing Mr. Trump’s supporters storm the United States Capitol building in Washington on Wednesday.
“What we saw was incredibly frustrating and tragic, and a lot of people are looking for direction,” said Nina Svirsky, a teacher from Brooklyn.
Dozens of masked and uniformed police officers monitored the rally; no arrests were reported. After most of the crowd had dissipated, discussions among some of those who remained focused specifically on the marked racial disparities in crowd control and law enforcement that were on display on Wednesday.
“If that was us, we really would’ve been beaten up, so we’re upset,” said Alfred Martinez, 39, a black man who said he came from the Bronx.
In Manhattan, a much smaller group gathered in Times Square, where members of Refuse Fascism, an activist organization, deployed a banner with the hashtag “#OutNow!” and called for the impeachment of President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
“We are here today because what we saw yesterday was an attempted coup,” one of the protest organizers, Jennifer Sabel, said over a loudspeaker.
Noting the modest size of the crowd, Ms Sabel urged those who were there to return on Saturday and bring others with them for what she hoped would be a national day of protest. The protest ended after about an hour.
Emma Kaplan, another organizer of Refuse Fascism, said she and her compatriots didn’t feel like they could bide their time until President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. took over from Mr Trump more late this month.
“The next 13 days, what we do now will determine the future,” Ms. Kaplan said. “We have to be on the sidelines and not hope this will resolve itself because yesterday showed where it leads.”
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