Campaign: White Men Reject Trump

Shared by Carla Wallace with LSURJ

As the Trump campaign attempts to halt ballot counting and interfere with election results, Organizing White Men for Collective Liberation (OWMCL) is launching a #WhiteMenRejectTrump campaign.  Polling exit data shows that this election millions of white men left the Trump base, but we are still the largest demographic that supports Trump.  With this campaign, white men from communities across the country - rural Kentucky, urban Los Angeles, Northern New Mexico - are joining together to vocally reject Trump and all that he represents.

Check out and share the campaign launch video and please follow and share the #WhiteMenRejectTrump website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages and posts! 
Michael Harrington, one of the campaign spokespeople from rural Kentucky, explains why he rejects Trump: “Donald Trump is one of those folks who looks down on us. It's insulting. He's just like every other billionaire and big corporate outsider. They come into our towns just to try and screw us over to make some money.  We're tired of it. We aren't going to take it anymore. It's our birthright as mountain people to fight back. So that's what we're doing. That's why we reject Trump.”

Over the last week, six spokespeople and a team of communications support volunteers have been working together to share our personal stories and to build a campaign website and social media content.  Late at night after work, as we’ve been developing the campaign, we’ve been talking about all the ways that we were taught as white men to care for our families, to protect our communities, and to fight alongside vulnerable people.  As veteran Garett Reppenhagen explains:  “The bonds that I made with my fellow soldiers in the U S military were created on the backbone of caring for one another and really accepting each other, despite our differences. Donald Trump doesn't exemplify those military values that I learned in basic training; my unit wouldn't follow him across the parking lot.  He makes our values morally bankrupt and I hope that isn't the future for the United States of America. I hope we can be proud of who we are as Americans.”

After a few initial conversations our team quickly began to build trust and open up about the pain and struggles we’ve experienced as white men.  Josh Schott described the struggles of his white male friends, “Men are the loneliest, most isolated, depressed group of people I know. And how this plays out in Montana, in my community, there is drug and alcohol abuse, depression and suicide that white men experience. I’ve lost 10 white male friends over the course of 13 years to drug and alcohol related incidents.  Donald Trump is tapping into our very real pain and anger, he’s using our pain against ourselves and against our neighbors and communities.  We need to choose a different path for what it means to be a white man.”
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The campaign will exist for as long as necessary in the post-election period to counter the message that most white men support Trump and will stand by his efforts to cling to power and undermine the election.  We reject Trump and we encourage white men who feel the same to join us.  Go to our website, share your stories.  Together we can show this country and the world that we can be strong, compassionate, white men that fight for liberty and justice for all people.

Check out and share the campaign launch video and please follow and share the #WhiteMenRejectTrump website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages and posts!