By Somi Jun, Correspondent
Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, described the surge of activism that followed the election of President Donald Trump saying that ACLU membership quadrupled in size in the four months since election night, growing from about 400,000 on November 8 to 1.6 million as of last Friday., “For those of you who are students, this is a moment that’s going to be one of the golden eras for activism,” Romero said. “There’s something qualitatively different in the water, the way that people have turned out, the way that people are engaged.”, Romero reflected on how much activist culture has changed since he started working at the ACLU in September 2001, describing the “energy” that the ACLU and other organizations have experienced since election night., “If you had said to me in week one of my job that you would see hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people turn out in protest because there was a ban on Muslims,” Romero said. “If you had asked me that in 2001, I would have been like, ‘Not this America.’”, Romero spoke March 31 at Richardson Hall as part of a conference for Princeton’s Latino alumni. Romero, who graduated in 1987, described the activist culture at Princeton during his school years, when the LGBT alliance was made up of a small number of “very courageous” students and the eating clubs were still segregated by gender., “The real kind of activist moment came from the women’s community here,” Romero said. “I remember that was my first activism on campus, in Take Back the Night marches, escorting my fellow female students from parties. I remember incidents that really kind of inflamed the whole issue of gender equality. Princeton was not what it is now.”, Romero did not identify as an activist when he first started college. He considered quitting school, despite his academic and social success, as he watched other Latino students struggle and “fall by the wayside.” He was not openly gay during his undergraduate years and did not join the the gay alliance., “I don’t think activists are just born, they blossom,” Romero said. “They’re cultivated.”, Romero ended his talk by touching on student activist movements on campus, showing support for the Princeton Private Prison Divestment group.
