Manuel Ortiz Escámez. Península 360 Press [P60P].
San Francisco, California. After the November 3 general election, and after the current U.S. president, Republican candidate for reelection, Donald Trump, made an unsubstantiated claim that "they want to steal the election" and then sue via his Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump: "STOP THE COUNTING!" -of votes-, activists in different cities of the country, including San Francisco, went out to protest "to defend democracy" and "ask that all votes be counted".
"We're here to celebrate Trump's defeat and at the same time we want to say that the vote should be respected," said Jason Gonzales, one of the young activists who gathered at noon at 555 California Street, where they painted a giant mural with the slogan "Count Every Vote.
The mural was painted right in front of the building where the offices of Jones Day are located, a national law firm hired by President Trump to stop the recount of votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin - states where his Democratic counterpart, Joe Biden, has won their respective electoral votes - along with the state of Georgia, where this morning was announced the restart of the count by a vote that marked the difference of 1,576 votes in favor of the Democrat.
"The truth is that the will of the people is clear: an overwhelming majority of people in this country have chosen a future with freedom and justice for all, and this is a desperate attempt to hinder the will of the voters," said David Escobedo of Bay Resistance, one of the organizations involved.
The protest organizers - who spread their messages on social networks with the hashtag #CountEveryVote - told Alianza News that if the president refuses to accept his defeat and thus leave power, they will begin an escalation of actions in the San Francisco Bay Area and the rest of the country to defend the vote.
"People made a great effort to go and vote. We've had an election with a lot of popular participation and it's not fair that Trump wants to throw all that away. The citizen's vote has to be respected," added Gonzalez.
So far, 71 electoral votes remain to be cast in the states of Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia, where Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden leads the states of North Carolina and Alaska.
