Wild scene in Allentown today…Trump vs Martin Sheen.
“Trump rally in Allentown draws thousands with a festive atmosphere marked by a few tense moments”
By Daniel Patrick Sheehan
October 29, 2024 at 7:56 PM ET
The center of Allentown was awash in red Tuesday, loud with pop and country music and the cries of merchandise hawkers whose wares bore the likeness of Donald Trump in any number of guises: gun-toting Rambo, knight in armor, bird-flipping tough guy taunting would-be assassins that he has proven to be bulletproof.
“If you love your mommy, don’t vote commie,” one hawker cried. “Save your rump, vote for Trump.”
This was nine hours or so before Trump’s rally at the PPL Center kicked off. There is, it seems, no such thing as too early when it comes to the former president’s appearances, especially a week shy of Election Day.
Trump’s visit to Allentown — a majority Latino city with one of the largest Puerto Rican populations in the country — came just two days after a comedian at a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.”
Pre-rally speakers sought to counter that message. Bethlehem pastor Roberto Albino delivered the invocation, and was followed by Tim Ramos, a former Republican candidate for Allentown mayor who touched on his “proud heritage” as a Puerto Rican.
There was little talk among the Trump partisans about the controversy during the morning and afternoon. At 4 p.m., though, protestors led by the progressive activist group Make The Road Action Pennsylvania gathered in a parking lot near the arena to voice their anger about the candidate’s visit.
“Donald Trump is not welcome in Allentown,” said Armando Jimenez, a deputy organizer with Make the Road. “Trump is bringing his rally of hate to our community.”
The group’s short march south on Seventh Street past rally attendees waiting to enter the arena prompted the only tense moments of the day, with Trump supporters screaming insults — “Get the hell out of my country!” one woman shrieked — over the chants of the protesters.
Police halted the march at Seventh and Linden streets, but eventually let it progress a little past Linden. Protesters and rally goers, separated by the width of Seventh Street, a few sawhorse barricades and some pungent heaps of police horse droppings, kept up the chanting and screaming for a time.
For most of the day, however, the gathering had the feeling of a street fair, down to the smell of grilled sausages and cheesesteaks.
At the southeast corner of Seventh and Hamilton, members of the Rod of Iron Ministries — a Poconos church that once held a blessing ceremony for AR-15 rifles — held big banners proclaiming Trump the chosen one of God.
Nearby, a man in a Trump mask — with a napkin serving as the kind of oversized bandage the candidate wore over his injured ear after he narrowly escaped assassination in July — posed for pictures with passersby.
Rallygoers talked about the great pains they took to see Trump in person.
Ken Shilling and Sherri Seese of Mifflin County set out at 3 a.m. or so and reached Allentown before dawn.
They couldn’t be too careful. They had seats for the Trump rally at the Bryce Jordan Center at Penn State on Saturday, but made the mistake of ducking out for a smoke and weren’t allowed back in.
Then, on Sunday, they drove to New York City to attend the Madison Square Garden rally, but the police told them not to bother — people had begun lining up for that one at 1 a.m. and they didn’t stand a chance of getting in.
“We’ve been wanting to see him so bad,” Shilling said, refueling with coffee at a Hamilton Street Dunkin’ before the couple went to claim their place in line.
Oh, the line. It started near the arena doors and traveled down Seventh Street to Walnut Street and made a right and then another right into an alley that ran behind an apartment building, then turned left and stretched along Maple Alley parallel to Hamilton Street, ending a little shy of Eighth Street where Jonelle Yonack of Orefield stood with her 9-year-old son, Dominic.
“I’m not voting for the person, I’m voting for the politics,” said Yonack, whose distinction as last in line ended almost immediately as a dozen or so newcomers lined up behind her.
The one-time Democrat said support of the nation’s blue-collar workers and middle class had shifted from her old party to the GOP in recent years, so she shifted, too.
“We used to think Republicans were only for the rich,” she said. “Now they’re the ones for the middle class.”
“Right now I feel disgusted that we’re helping everyone else and not Americans,” she said.
Shilling, a retired corrections officer, said he is most concerned with immigration and eager to see Trump fulfill promises to deport undocumented people and strictly limit border entries.
He and Seese said they are also eager to see what Trump can do for the economy. They’ve struggled with inflation in the past four years, watching the power of a dollar shrink at the gas pump and grocery store.
Shilling said energy production is key to lowering costs and supports Trump’s call to expand oil drilling and fracking.
“It all starts with energy,” he said. “The more you pay for fuel, the more you pay for everything.”
Taking the stage in the hours before Trump spoke to the nearly packed PPL Center crowd, state Sen. Jarrett Coleman, Lehigh Valley congressional candidate Ryan Mackenzie and and U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser all delivered a similar message: Knock on doors, make a plan to vote, and help friends and family to vote.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio called Kamala Harris’ recent attacks on Trump — including labeling Trump a fascist — as “vile” and “dangerously divisive.”
Yet the day didn’t belong entirely to the GOP. A little after 10 a.m., actor Martin Sheen visited the Harris-Walz campaign office at 919 Hamilton St., two blocks from the Trump rally.
Sheen is known for his roles in “Badlands” and “Apocalypse Now” but, in the eyes of the Democrats crowding the campaign office, he is the living embodiment of Jed Barlet, the president he played for seven seasons on “The West Wing.”
“Here comes the president,” someone said as Sheen came through the front door.
“Me llamo Ramon Estevez, AKA Martin Sheen,” the actor said, a bilingual greeting reflecting his heritage as the son of a Spanish father and Irish mother.
Sheen has been a committed social justice activist for decades, in keeping with his Catholic faith. He’s campaigning for Harris and Walz because the Democrats’ worldview aligns most closely with his own, but he doesn’t expect to sway voters one way or the other, he said.
Conscience compels him to speak for what is right, Sheen said, whether or not anyone else listens or follows.
“While acting is what I do for a living, activism is what I do to stay alive,” he said.
Sheen’s short speech began quietly, but soon climbed to the poetic rhetorical heights that were the trademark of his television president.
“I believe in the ever-expanding inclusive future of America,” he said. “I believe in the dignity of labor and the sanctity of all life. I believe in the Constitution and I support the republic that it defines. And this above all, I believe in the sacred bonds that unite us as brothers and sisters and family.”
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