News / Hazel says online flak won’t discourage her from standing up to bigoted president
THE WOMAN who organised Saturday’s march in protest against the values of newly-inaugurated US president Donald Trump says she and others will not be discouraged by at-times vitriolic online criticism.
Around 40 individuals took to the streets of Lerwick – joining 100,000 in London and millions more worldwide – to make a stand against a man who has bragged about sexually assaulting women, mocked a disabled reporter and disparaged other minority groups.
Hazel Adamson from Cunningsburgh decided at the last minute to organise the walk. It was only publicised a day or so beforehand via social media – had it been planned further in advance she expects there would have been a higher turnout.
“I remember after the election in November, and also after the Brexit vote, me and some of my friends just felt quite down about it and concerned about the direction the world seemed to be going in,” she said.
“A lot of my friends have bairns, and they didn’t want their bairns growing up in the world where this kind of feeling becomes the norm.”
She said she fully expected some people to view it as a waste of time, but that they were missing the point.
Hazel said straight white men, in particular, were able to go through life without facing the challenges that many other groups in society do. While many are able to put themselves in other people’s shoes, others seem to find it difficult to empathise with those less privileged than themselves.
“Being part of that demographic… they don’t see it, and because they don’t have to think about it, it never touches on their psyche.
“We hate the fact that Donald Trump has been elected president when he’s said such awful things, not just about women but all sorts of groups – immigrants, building the wall, Mexicans are rapists, mocking the disabled reporter.
“I still can’t believe that he was elected on the back of that, it was just despicable.”
The purpose of the walk, she said, was nothing to do with thinking a few dozen people marching in Shetland would stop Trump in his tracks. Instead it was about showing solidarity with Americans and many others around the world left disillusioned by his election victory.
“I was really shocked [by some of the responses],” Hazel said. “I knew there would be a lot of people saying ‘what is the point?’, but I was quite shocked by the level – some of them seem really angry about it.
“I couldn’t quite get my head around the level of anger, it seemed to be that some of them were personally affronted that we had dared…”
In particular, one woman in her early twenties had commented to the effect that they had only gone on a march because “none of the tea-and-scone shops were open”, leaving Hazel to wonder: “how have you ended up with that kind of opinion about this kind of thing?”
She lived in the US for three years – one year in Illinois and two in Michigan – and still has many friends there who are “bereft, they just don’t understand what is going on”. When told that people in Shetland had marched in solidarity “they were just so touched and that’s what it’s about, [people] seem to have totally missed the point”.
Fundamentally, while Hazel disagreed with some of the policies and views held by the likes of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, in the past “all of the other presidents seemed to understand and respect that it was they were taking on”.
It appears that is not something that can be said about Trump, whose team have continued telling blatant lies since taking office – including attempting to exaggerate the turnout for Friday’s inauguration. His adviser Kellyanne Conway even invoked shades of George Orwell’s 1984 in an attempt to explain those falsehoods on NBC on Sunday.
“I don’t think we’re going to get discouraged,” Hazel added. “For the younger generation, whether or not we have bairns, we can’t allow this kind of thing to become the norm and we need to keep challenging it in some way.”
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