It’s impossible as a NYC activist not to protest in the gaudy Trump Tower space open to the public. It’s a brass-coated blank slate for rebellious creativity, like the Learn As Protest reading series, or getting arrested while advocating for immigrants, or reading the Constitution until the Secret Service throws you out.

I was waiting for a fellow activist at the famed Tower the other day, and for the first time had a moment to walk around the three floors of doom. Who and what is living in here?

Trump shot glasses. Totally Nailed It! manicure sets. A hat that says Make Farmers Great Again (when were they not great?). A Trump Ice Cream Parlor. Trump teddy bears. A Gucci store. Starbucks, featuring a promotional picture of Ivanka flirting with her favorite Starbucks drink. Bland-looking food. A bar. Trump the Brand. Trump the Capitalist.

Best things about Trump Tower: free, clean bathrooms! Benches for folks that need to rest. Air conditioning.

What’s not here: anything that would bring to mind Trump’s current job as president. No plaque, no inauguration picture, no effort to make his stolen presidency seem valid, not a smidgen of policy goals or civics or history or dignity. It might as well be a service area on the highway.

If you had a three floor atrium smack in the middle of New York City where millions of people from around the world could enter for free, what would you put in it?

The Dark Tower - Martin Quinn