Outside The Impeachment Trial, Young Activists Make Themselves Heard

By Sarah Emily Baum


As lawmakers and journalists flocked to the Senate chambers on Tuesday morning (January 22), protesters and activists gathered on the National Mall. They unfurled a banner in front of the Capitol Building; in the gallery, they stood in silent defiance of President Donald Trump’s alleged misconduct. Elementary school students stood in Senate office buildings with their textbooks in hand, alongside senior citizens, a couple of of whom were in wheelchairs. Capitol Police officers surrounded the demonstrators, while right-wing antagonists attempted to get a rise out of each person on the scene.


Those first few hours — contentious, long, and full of dissent — set the scene for the initial official day of President Trump’s impeachment trial, while in which a jury of United States Senators determine whether or not to convict the president on two counts of high crimes and misdemeanors — namely, Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress. In December, the Home voted in favor of impeaching him, butt that didn’t remove him from office. It is currently the Senate’s job to decide if Trump should be removed from office for violating the Constitution if he orchestrated his infamous phone call with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky and afterward contained up military aid to the country before allegedly standing in the way of Congress’s investigation of that phone call.


But some senators, who serve because the jury on this trial, weren’t exactly keen for the three-day trial process to begin.


“I never welcome it. I regret it,” Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) told MTV News Tuesday morning, pointing to the November election as a cause for her reticence. “It generally seems to me the people could make the judgement, although here we are.” As one CNN poll found, 51 percent of respondents thought the president should be removed from office. And an impeachment throughout an election year isn’t without precedent: President Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868 (he was ultimately acquitted by the Senate on 11 charges).


Seven Democratic members of the Residence of Representatives, led by Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA), are serving as impeachment managers accountable for driving the case for Trump’s removal. Their argument: He violated the Constitution once he pressured the President of Ukraine to investigate former Vice President and potential presidential rival Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter Biden, and then coerced staffers to disregard congressional subpoenas while in the Home investigation. Conversely, the White Home Counsel, the team in charge of defending the president that includes lawyers Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr, is arguing that the impeachment inquiry is “constitutionally invalid,” on the grounds that Trump’s dealings with President Zelensky were within his jurisdiction of executive power.


Home impeachment managers, who are spearheading Trump’s opposition, are faced with a uphill battle: They must convince 67 of the 100 senators from across the nation to convict, and so remove, the president from office. Any fewer than a supermajority and he’ll be acquitted.


Although the articles of impeachment were delivered to the Senate on January 15, the action didn’t begin up until 1 p.M. On Tuesday. That’s whenever lawmakers gathered in the Senate chambers to set up the rules of the trial to come. They debated how long the trial will last, if witnesses will be permitted, and if new evidence will be admissible, and also more tedious rules like because the foods allowed on the Senate floor, a moratorium on electronics photographs, along with a mandate on senators’ attendance. And while Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) stepped out mid-hearing for a Fox News interview, and others snuck in Apple Watches, the 100 lawmakers are expected to brave the 12-hour hearings in silence, away from outdoors influences like because the president’s constant stream of tweets about the ordeal.


Meanwhile, protesters outdoors Capitol Hill got creative as they made themselves heard. Some drummed pots and pans with metal spoons to draw an audience. Others, like Connor Atwood, a college student from California, braved the harsh D.C. Cold to lead political chants. The 21-year-old told MTV News he was protesting because he feels the Trump administration is “moving in the direction of installing an open dictatorship.”


“You visualize them concentrating power in the executive branch,” he mentioned. “They're running a rough shot over Congress. [It’s] all obstruction.”


As a young activist with Reject Fascism’s #OutNow movement, Atwood mentioned he put his statistics on hold for a semester to travel the nation and mobilize youth to oust the president. “The evidence is very clear and overwhelming,” he mentioned. “The masses of people actually have a role to play in this by coming into the streets.”


Derek Torstenson, a 22-year-old from Fairfax, Virgina, also protested on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, urging senators to take action against President Trump. “The president is corrupt and he's hiding a lot of stuff from us,” he mentioned. “If [young people] come out and use their voice[s], that will help.”


Washington, D.C., Is no stranger to protests, however few presidents have incited them the way Trump has: On January 21, 2017, the day immediately after his inauguration, millions of people gathered in the capital for the Women’s March on Washington — and thousands more reconvened on Saturday (January 18) for the fourth annual event. They have marched for stricter gun-control laws, Black and Indigenous peoples’ rights, and to urge lawmakers to take action against the climate crisis. They rallied against the Trump administration’s xenophobic travel ban that targeted Muslim-majority countries and the appointment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.


Right now, they are rallying in hopes of an end to an administration has caused further strife to already marginalized people, and Trump isn’t the only lawmaker protesters are putting on notice this week — plenty of senators are being watched, also. Lydia Valentine, a 17-year-old from Gorham, Maine, is paying especially close attention to what Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) does while in the trial. Collins has a reputation for being a “moderate” Republican; she is one of about eight lawmakers whom political analysts believe might break party lines while in the trial. The order also includes Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Doug Jones (D-AL), Martha McSally (R-AZ), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).


“We habitually talk about how ‘I aspire to live through wonderful events in history,’ and right now we are and we’re panicking,” Lydia told MTV News. “I think the role of young people is to stay irritated. Even if it doesn't go the way we want, stay furious so it doesn't happen again.”


As it has in the past, that anger is inspiring action. Soon after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) introduced rules for impeachment that several Democrats deemed unfair, Hillary Clinton and other people urged constituents to call their lawmakers and voice support for a just trial. Plus it appeared to have worked — soon after acquiring pressure from Collins, Murkowski, and others in a closed-door lunch before the trail, McConnell revised his resolution, the New York Times reported. He extended the debate from two days to three and automatically admitted the Home of Representatives records into evidence, two provisions that were not originally segment of the resolution. While every Senate vote matters in a supermajority, several folks are paying particular attention to these more moderate so-called “swing-vote senators,” some of whom are up for re-election this November.


Ethan Somers, a 19-year old from Evergreen, Colorado, is closely watching his senator, Cory Gardner (R-CO), who has also been tapped as a potential “swing-vote senator,” although Somers is quick to point out that Gardner’s voting record is basically routinely in lock-step with Trump.


“Up up until right now [Gardner has] been in support of the president it seems, and he’s did not think about constituent calls to contributor for a fair trial,” Somers, a senior at George Washington University, told MTV News. Such avoidance tactics didn’t necessarily surprise the activist: According to the New York Times, Gardner hasn’t contained a town hall meeting with his constituents in over two years, and Somers says he and other activists once had to literally chase the senator down the street to elicit any categorize kind of response on issues like gun violence prevention.


That hasn’t stopped young people from making their advice known, including those who are also young to vote.


“Even they are represented by him and deserve to have their voices heard,” Somers added. “Gardner really needs to listen to constituents rather than making them chase him down the street.” (MTV News has reached out to the senator’s office for comment.)


And as youth activists call their lawmakers and take to the streets, so will veteran activists who took a stand throughout President Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 along with remember the tenuous lead-up to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974. That includes Colleen Boland, a retired senior master sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, who sees her activism as just another way of fighting for her country.


“We've called our senators, we've written, we've screamed, we've organized, and nothing has worked,” Sgt. Boland, an organizer with Remove Trump, told MTV News. “We need to turn what we know and our experience over to the youth.”


They’re prepared to take the charge. “There's been no movement for social change in this nation without young people,” Atwood mentioned. It remains to be seen whether senators will listen.