Wednesday, we ran an interview with McKay Coppins, a Buzzfeed reporter who had video taped security at Monday’s Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas. His video showed security scuffling with and dragging out black protesters.
The group protesting at the Trump rally was part of Unity Las Vegas.
The leader of the Unity, Tenisha Martin, was one of the protesters Coppins caught on video at the Trump rally. This morning, she told KNPR's State of Nevada that Unity Las Vegas is a group of concerned citizens that came together in the wake of the police brutality cases around the country over the past few years.
She said they are aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement but are not affiliated with a national organization.
According to Martin, she felt from the moment she walked into the rally that she was not welcome. She said she had that feeling before she even took out the signs she had snuck into the rally.
"It was surreal," she explained. "It was a room that I felt for the most part didn't like me just because the color of my skin or had some sort of hate or animosity towards me just because of the color of my skin."
Martin said she was one of only a handful of African Americans in the room and some Trump supporters took pictures of her - before she even started protesting. Martin believes the supporters at the rally took their animosity to a new level.
"We were there to bring awareness, but they were there to almost spew hate," she said, "And some of the things that we heard during our protest just kind of proved that."
She said people yelled 'burn 'em,' the Nazi salute 'sieg heil,' 'shoot 'em' and 'f--- black lives.'
Martin brought two signs into the rall. One said "Dump Trump." The second said "No Hate, You're Fired," a nod to Trump's catchphrase from his reality TV series "The Apprentice."
According to her, as she was standing silently holding the signs, a man grabbed the signs and tore them to pieces. Martin said she then started to chant "Dump Trump."
"What shocked me is that men got in my face," she said. "Men shoved me."
She said the group was surprised by how aggressive the people at the rally were and that Trump didn't try to calm the situation.
"I think what shocked us is that we thought that we would be told at some point, 'Hey, it's time to go' and instead it was 'it's time to go' as we're being forcibly taken out," she said.
Martin said the group had protested at rallies for Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, but neither became that heated.
"This shows that his following is at a different level of hate really," she said. "It was more a rally of hate. They really had a detest for us for no other reason than probably the color of our skin."
Tenisha Martin, Unity Las Vegas
