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SAN FRANCISCO/HOUSTON, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- Another night of protests in the Untied States against president-elect Donald Trump turned violent in Portland, Oregon, on Thursday.
It started at 6:00 p.m. U.S. Pacific time as a peaceful gathering at a downtown square in the major city of the U.S. Pacific Northwest, and the crowd later marched onto the Hawthorne Bridge across the Williamette River.
On its Twitter account, Portland police said that, about two and a half hours into the protest, they received "reports of vandalism and aggressive behavior in (the) protest crowd," including attacks on drivers.
Reports from the biggest city in Oregon said at least 19 cars were damaged at a Toyota dealership, and windows of businesses were smashed in a northwestern district. People threw objects at police, who used "less lethal munitions" to disperse the crowd.
The police termed the protest a riot, saying they made 26 arrests. Local media put the number of protesters at hundreds. There have been no reports of injuries.
Majority of people in Oregon, as well as residents of other states on the U.S. west coast, including California and Washington, did not vote for Trump, who became the next U.S. president on electoral votes, rather than on popular votes, on Tuesday night.
Down south, in northern Californian cities of Oakland and San Jose, protests against Trump entered the third night.
Earlier on Thursday, hundreds of students in San Francisco, a major city in northern California, demonstrated for five hours before converging in front of the City Hall. For the city, it was the second day of protest against Trump.
Up to Wednesday night, when protests were staged in 25 cities around the United States, the most common slogan chanted and sign displayed was "Not My President."
Trump himself responded late Thursday, tweeting: "Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!"
In small protests that erupted across Colorado's urban areas, Latino demonstrators in Denver on Wednesday and Thursday also held up signs saying, "Build No Wall!" referring to one of Trump's key campaign themes, which is to build a "giant wall" between the United States and Mexico.
"First we had 9-11, and now we have 11-9," said Ernesto Chavez, 49, a commercial contractor in western Colorado, referring to the date that Trump was declared the election's winner. "Trump lies about everything just to get elected, and the big wall is a just a big joke to manipulate angry, white Americans."
"This man is crazy," Raphael Rodrigo, 45, an auto mechanic told Xinhua during a small gathering of some 30 protesters at a street corner on Thursday.
"Our entire community is very upset," he said.
High school and college students on Wednesday joined the anti-Trump protest in Colorado. "They are incensed and cannot believe she (Hillary Clinton) lost," said John Gardener, a member of the University of Colorado's Student Democrats.
On campus of the Texas State University in San Marcos, central Texas,more than 100 students rallied on Thursday in protest of Trump's presidential victory, one day after more than 400 protesters marched through downtown Austin, the state's capital.
As the second largest state in the United States and a stronghold of the Republican Party, Texas has 38 electoral votes and Trump beat his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on Tuesday by winning 290 electoral votes, including the 38 electoral votes from the Lone Star State.
On social media, Trump supporters have accused the protesters of sour grapes or worse, and said the protesters were not respecting the democratic process.
