There was a September front page article in a local newspaper that focused on a Republican complaining about being harassed as a Trump supporter in liberal Madison. This man supported Trump during his first two campaigns anonymously but stated that now he wears his “MAGA” hat (Make America Great Again) and puts his Trump sign in his yard to support this campaign. The article alluded to the persecution of Republicans in progressive Madison. It also stated that Trump signs were removed or destroyed. This featured Republican also shared when people see his “MAGA” hat, they talk to him about how wrong he is. My appreciation to these unknown White people who are courageous enough, even compassionate enough, to talk to this man and engage him in a conversation about his choice.

I can understand the public not knowing who Trump was in his first 2016 presidential election. We lived through four terrible years where Trump showed us who he really is. There are no excuses in this campaign, not to understood exactly the damage that he did as President and will do more if elected twice. His supporters overlook his urging followers to attack the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, his criminal conviction, his disrespect for anyone who isn’t White and prosperous, his public abuse of women, his refusal to reveal his taxes, his senility on the campaign trail, and most of all, his incredible lies that he repeats again and again.

During the COVID pandemic, a friend walked with me around my neighborhood for exercise and fresh air. We saw a house covered with enormous Trump signs. The door opened and a White man came out. He stood in his driveway staring at us. My friend was tugging my arm, saying “Let’s go.” I am looking at him, thinking “say something crazy to us, I dare you.”  He was staring at me, and I stared back at him. My friend kept urging me to leave, but it was important to me to prove “you won’t scare me.”  My friend kept walking and later said “I thought you were going to confront him or step in his yard,” I told my friend “We have a right to feel safe walking in my neighborhood where I live and am a homeowner.”

The Trump supporter did not open his mouth. It was clear he hated us. Trump signs alert you to the fact that people hate anyone who is not them or their kind. Is it better to know or worse to know who hates everybody else that does not look or think like them? When Trump lost the last election, I made it a point to walk past this Trump house. If I had met him in the driveway again, I would have smiled, grateful that Trump lost even when he attempted to cheat and steal the election.

A few weeks ago, I was riding with a friend taking me home. She was turning down that street, and I cautioned her that there was a Trump supporter who in the previous election had Trump yard paraphernalia and came out and starred like he hated Black people. As we went past, his Trump coverings were worse. There were Trump banners that covered the house, and a full-length Trump in camouflage on the door. The right banner said, “Joe and the ho must go.”

In 2024, I was stunned that his signage was worse. This friend asked, “Why is Vice-President Kamala Harris being called a whore?”  I replied, “With Trump’s sexual antics and payoffs to keep women quiet, why is he or his supporters calling anyone in the whole USA, a whore?”  As a both Black and woman in liberal Madison, I am confronted with Trump propaganda that is not informative, but disrespectful and threatening. No one calls a woman, especially the Vice-President of the United States, this derogatory word as freedom of expression. I will not even disrespect Trump’s wife by applying that definition to her, despite the fact that she is the only USA First Lady with her naked photographs circulating on the internet.

I shared the shock of seeing such racist, sexist signage with others. Republicans tell White man Joe Biden to go, while Multiracial woman Kamala Harris is insulted, before she even campaigned as a presidential candidate.

There is a worse eye-witness account. A friend shared in a Madison grocery store, she saw four White people, who she thought were family: a man, woman and two children. All four had on T-shirts that said, “Joe and the Ho must go.”  No, she did not talk to them because adults wearing nasty messages like that are dangerous. This was more horrible because adults were teaching the next generation, their children to hate.  I reflected on this newspaper article about a White man who is privileged, not because he worked for special consideration but only because of White skin and being born a male. Yet he is complaining because thinking people question his support of Trump. Anyone who supports Trump, no matter their color or reason, is truly misguided. I believe there are more thinking people; Republicans, Democrats, Independents and hard-working folks who will vote against Trump. In response to the newspaper article and to the Trump zealot, I purchased two yard signs that express my decisions. The first one has Harris and Walz with the statement “We won’t go back.”  The second yard sign states “Nope to Trump in Wisconsin.”