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Rally held outside Portland City Hall to protest Trump reelection, call for solutions

A crowd gathered downtown on Friday to voice concerns about how Donald Trump's return to the White House could worsen the situation at home and abroad.

PORTLAND, Ore. — A group of people rallied outside Portland City Hall on Friday, three days after Election Day, to condemn President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House. 

The rally was planned before the results of the election came in. People at the rally said it was a response to the lack of "viable solutions offered by both the Democratic and Republican party." They're hoping to see meaningful change. 

"We're here because we've been fighting for years for health, housing, and education. And whether it was Trump, or Biden before this, we have not been getting it and we are wanting to push to actually get that realized," said Cody Urban, with the International League of Peoples' Struggle. 

"The solution is not more war, and more aggression and more xenophobia, right. It's also not more criminalizing of migrants or people here, it's actually looking at the problems people are facing every day and finding solutions to that," said Haven, with Friends of the Filipino People in Struggle. 

Some of those problems, they said, are rising inflation, rising costs of rent, and rising costs of food.

"Some of us are really bearing the brunt of the economic crisis," said Carolyn Pavlovic, with Bayan Oregon. "We are living paycheck to paycheck. We can't face the increase rent, struggling to put food on the table and so we are really here to voice that neither the Republican nor Democratic party is the solution to our problems. It's really organizing together as people power."

Before the former president takes office once again, people at the rally vow to keep resisting — pushing to end war, repression and genocide. 

"I have hope because we say when we rally, the people united will never be defeated," Urban said.

"We can really make the world, and we have to stop relying on these politicians to step in and save us," Haven said. 

The rally ended around 6 p.m. on Friday. Throughout the rest of the evening, things were quiet downtown, with no additional demonstrations or activity to report. However, there was a large police presence, as they monitored the event throughout the afternoon and into the night. 

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