To kick off its planned week of election protests, the local organizing group ShutDownDC is anticipating “thousands” of protesters will come to its eight-hour event at Black Lives Matter plaza on election night. In addition to a Jumbotron with election results, the event will have DJs, performances from dance troupes like DC’s Step Africa, three GoGo bands, and speeches.
The event will start at 4 PM on November 3rd, and will be organized with 350 DC, Arm in Arm DC, Beautiful Trouble, Black Lives Matter DC, Casa Action, Continue to Serve, Democratic Socialists of America DMV, Extinction Rebellion DC, Long Live GoGo, the Palm Collective, Rising Tide North America, Spaces in Action, and Sunrise Movement DC.
The election night demonstration is just night one of ShutDownDC’s planned weeks of action. On its website, the local group, which organized a city-wide shutdown last fall where they blocked major DC intersections in the name of climate change, describes election night as an opportunity to “process our feelings of hope, anger, fear and exhaustion as a community,” as many consider it unlikely that the election will be called that night.
In the days following Tuesday, ShutDown plans to “come out into the streets every day to respond to rapidly changing events.” According to the website, that may involve demonstrating in front of individual members of Congress at the airport, train station, or their homes as they come back to DC to go into session the week after the election.
Jane is a Chicago transplant who now calls Cleveland Park her home. Before joining Washingtonian, she wrote for Smithsonian Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she studied journalism and opera.
