USC student assaulted for wearing Bernie shirt

#FeelTheBern

On Saturday April 9th, a group of USC students were verbally assaulted and threatened because one of them was wearing a Bernie shirt.

The reason he was targeted? Kuba was wearing a Bernie shirt.

At 2am, Kuba and his six friends were hanging out in the McDonalds’ near USC’s The Row, when three men and a one girl began harassing Kuba for wearing a Bernie shirt.

One man told Kuba, “A Bernie shirt? You must be unemployed.”

Initially, Kuba’s friends thought the attackers were just messing around. “I enjoy a good political debate,” said David Bloch, “but very quickly I learned this was nothing like that.”

David Bloch (left), Stephen Davis (middle) and Kuba (right)

The men continued provoking the group, a female friend intervened, the men immediately called her “a dumb slut.”

Another friend, Stephen Davis, stepped in to defend her, but this only triggered the conversation to become violent. One of the men asked Stephen, “Are you going to fight me, tough guy? Let’s fight.”

“I thought about it,” recalls Stephen. Instead, he told him, “I don’t want to fight you, so just step off.”

However, the men remained agitated and continued to provoke the group. “It was clear they were looking for a fight,” said Stephen.

When David once again asked them to back off, the men made anti-Semitic remarks towards him.

They told him, “You’re just a poor Jew. Look at what you’re wearing.” The men then insulted Stephen, calling him a “long-haired woman” and hoping to provoke the group enough to start a fight. On top of their insults, the men went out of their way to remind the group that they weren’t Trump supporters.

Over four times, the men threatened the group to fight them outside. “I don’t know why no one else in McDonalds stepped in,” remarked David, “Maybe they were just tired.”

“They didn’t mention anything about race, which kind of astounds me,” David commented. “It just shows that you can have a lot of hatred, without getting race involved.”

“This election is emphasizing so much on masculinity, or at least weird conceptions of masculinity,” said Stephen, “which I think in part, Trump fosters. Everyone just gets too into it.”

Unfortunately, this was not the first time he was targeted for wearing his Bernie shirt. Kuba recalls another time when he was walking near USC and an Uber drove by and yelled “Trump!” The experience was short but memorable. “I thought I was going to get mugged,” Kuba admitted.

Despite their nightmare McDonalds’ experience, Kuba, Stephen and David said they were still feeling the Bern and would vote for Bernie Sanders if he wins the nomination.

“This was just an example of aggressive uneducated Americans, which most times, people don’t see,” David concluded. “It’s not fun.”

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University of Southern California