Mike McCombs
The Island News
Around 250 people gathered at the intersection of Ribaut Road and Boundary Street in Beaufort on Presidents Day, Monday, Feb. 17, to protest against the policies of Elon Musk and the Donald Trump Administration in front of the Beaufort County Administration Building and Beaufort City Hall.
The protests were similar in nature to the rally the week before but with more than twice as many people in attendance. They coincided with 50501 events – 50 protests in 50 states at the same time. There was a protest Monday at noon at the Statehouse in Columbia, as well as a protest in Bluffton at the same time as this one.
“What brought me out here today is I am sick of all the lies,” said Paula Guerry, who has lived in Beaufort for 37 years. It was her last duty station as a nurse in the U.S. Navy. “Our democracy has fallen apart, our president doesn’t lead. The people that represent us in Congress, they don’t do anything about it. It’s gotta be a grassroots effort or nothing’s gonna happen ’cause no one else is doing anything.”
She said the previous week had seen her first protest in her 73 years, and she intends to keep protesting until something changes.
“The day Trump got reelected I just, I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I was like, how did this happen? How did people not see what happened in the first four years? How do you justify what happened in the first four years, and then say you wanna do it again? When they can’t make their payments on their $60,000 trucks they’ll understand. When they can’t go to the doctor ’cause Medicare is gone, they’ll understand. When they lose everything they’ve got, they’ll understand.”
Guerry says lawmakers are ignoring constituents’ complaints and hiding behind Trump.
“First of all, I’d say answer your phone. And listen to your voice messages,” Guerry said she’d like to tell her elected representatives. “And then I would say, you’re not representing me. You are … you are Trump’s bootlickers. And that’s all you’re representing, is him, because you want to save your own political careers, you don’t care a thing about the constituents.”
Gabriella Garcia, a 27-year-old USC Beaufort student from Bluffton who works on Lady’s Island, had more specific reasons for coming out. She is a member of VIVA, a group that is emphasizing “respectful and peaceful participation” in protests, especially against the immigration policy of the Trump Administration.
On Monday, she had just learned the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office had applied to participate in the Delegation of Immigration Authority Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The provision allows police officers and sheriff’s deputies to function essentially as agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Garcia said, “the community’s going to be impacted dramatically, and the relationship with law enforcement will be impacted dramatically, so that’s what has me out here today, to be the voice of others who can’t be out here today.”
Garcia was born and raised on Hilton Head Island by a Mexican father and Costa Rican mother. She first protested during the Black Lives Matter events several years ago.
“I feel like the first step right now is education, … educating people on what’s going on in the [Trump] administration that could be affecting their day-to-day lives, because a lot of people, especially young people, kind of took this as a ‘I’m not gonna vote, it’s not gonna matter,’” she said. “When it does matter, it impacts your day-to-day life.”
Garcia would tell her elected officials, including those locally, to “Say no to 287(g), you know, protect your immigrants that live here. You know, your citizens and noncitizens, black, brown, … 287(g) will impact us both, it’s basically racial profiling. It deputizes officers and allows them to act like ICE agents, they can stop you for anything. And more likely our white counterparts are not gonna be as affected as black and brown residents here, so I would tell them please say no to 287(g) as you did in 2017.”
Mitch Mitchell, a Beaufort City Councilman and retired U.S, Air Force Major General who spent 40 years in uniform, including six in the Marines, was back to have his voice heard again this week.
“A lot has happened since last week, but a lot hasn’t changed,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell was concerned with a lot of what the Trump Administration has done, but specifically with the stripping of DEI from government and military programs and the attempted elimination of things like the story of the Tuskegee Airmen from history learned at the U.S. service academies.
“For a small period of history, basically from the Civil Rights [Movement] until now, that here has been some effort to tell that history that hasn’t been told. It’s not pretty history, I understand that, but it’s history nonetheless,” Mitchell said. “If they understand the gap between African Americans and Caucasians, African Americans have 10 percent of the wealth, those things [happened] because of laws that were put in place so that we couldn’t succeed. Now we’ve had some progress and we have a President and a Secretary of Defense who are going to strip that progress out of the only place where we truly have a melding of our population, which is in the military.
“My hope was that if folks go in the military from Kentucky or California or South Carolina, and they come together at Parris Island or they come together at Fort Jackson, that when they leave, because we’ve had this opportunity to work together, maybe fight together or maybe save each other’s butt, then they’ll take that perspective back home. But if they don’t know the history, then they’re going to go back home and join the same tribe that they left, which is what’s happening. So that’s my problem with what the President’s doing.”
Mitchell said without DEI (Diversity, Equality, Inclusion), Jim Crow and the Black Codes kept history like his from being told. What’s impressive, he said, is that the Tuskegee Airmen and they Montford Point Marines, … they fought anyway.
“I have no doubt that history will not be kind to this period in American history,” Mitchell said.
Michael Richardson, who has lived in Beaufort since 1979, is upset will the executive orders Trump is issuing.
“(He’s) closing things, blaming things on DEI,” he said. “DEI obviously means you’re a black person. When the plane crashed in Washington, it had to be DEI, they said.”
Richardson is surprised that Congress allowed [Elon] Musk to disband USAID to all the countries the U.S. is assisting.
“The richest man in the world is taking food away from the poorest countries in the world … that is upsetting,” he said. “It’s also upsetting that Congress would roll over to allow [Trump] to do the things that he’s doing that are against the law. No one is above the law, and that’s what I’ve written our Senators and Congressional leaders about. Stand up and enforce the law. Don’t be subservient to anyone.
“Honor your oath of office. When you took that oath to be a Senator or a Congressman, you took that oath to protect the Constitution of the United States … and they’re not doing that.”
Mike McCombs is the Editor of The Island News and can be reached at TheIslandNews@gmail.com.
