By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, ASHRAF KHALIL and CHRISTINE FERNANDO, Related Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — 1000’s of individuals from round the USA had been rallying within the nation’s capital Saturday for girls’s reproductive rights and different causes they imagine are beneath menace from the incoming Trump administration, reprising the unique Girls’s March days earlier than President-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration.
Eight years after the primary historic Girls’s March in the beginning of Trump’s first time period, marchers mentioned they had been caught off guard by Trump’s victory and are decided now to indicate that assist stays sturdy for girls’s entry to abortion, for transgender individuals, for combating local weather change and different points.
The march is only one of a number of protests, rallies and vigils centered on abortion, rights, immigration rights and the Israel-Hamas battle deliberate upfront of inauguration Monday. Across the nation, over 350 related marches are going down in each state.
Jill Parrish of Austin, Texas, mentioned she initially purchased a airplane ticket to Washington for what she anticipated to be Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris’s inauguration. She wound up altering the dates to march in protest forward of Trump’s swearing-in as a substitute, saying the world ought to know that half of U.S. voters didn’t assist Trump.
“Most importantly, I’m here to demonstrate my fear, about the state of our democracy,” Parrish mentioned.
Demonstrators staged in squares round Washington forward of the march, pounding drums and yelling chants beneath a slate-gray sky and in a cold wind. Protesters then marched to the Lincoln Memorial for bigger rally and truthful, the place organizations on the native, state and nationwide stage will host data tables.
They held indicators with slogans together with, “Save America” and “Against abortions? Then don’t have one” and “Hate won’t win.”
There have been temporary moments of rigidity between protesters and Trump supporters. The march paused briefly when a person in a purple Make America Nice Once more hat and a inexperienced camo backpack walked right into a line of demonstrators on the entrance. Police intervened and separated him from the group peacefully as marchers chanted “We won’t take the bait.”
Because the protesters approached the Washington Monument, a small group of males in MAGA hats strolling in the other way appeared to attract the eye of a protest chief with a megaphone. The chief veered nearer to the group and commenced chanting “No Trump, no KKK” via the megaphone. The teams had been separated by excessive black fencing and law enforcement officials finally gathered round.
Rick Glatz, of Manchester, New Hampshire, mentioned he got here to Washington for the sake of his 4 granddaughters: ” I’m a grandpa. And that’s why I’m marching.”
Minnesota highschool instructor Anna Bergman wore her unique pink pussy hat from her time within the 2017 Girls’s March, a second that captured the shock and anger of progressives and moderates at Trump’s first win.
With Trump coming again now, “I just wanted to be surrounded by likeminded people on a day like today,” Bergman mentioned.
Rebranded and reorganized, the rally has a brand new identify — the Folks’s March — as a way to broaden assist, particularly throughout a reflective second for progressive organizing after Trump’s decisive win in November. The Republican takes the oath of workplace Monday.
Girls outraged over Trump’s 2016 presidential win flocked to Washington in 2017 and arranged giant rallies in cities all through the nation, constructing the bottom of a grassroots motion that turned referred to as the Girls’s March. The Washington rally alone attracted over 500,000 marchers, and tens of millions extra participated in native marches across the nation, marking one of many largest single-day demonstrations in U.S. historical past.
This 12 months, the gang was far fewer than the anticipated 50,000 contributors, already simply one-tenth the scale of the primary march. The demonstration comes amid a restrained second of reflection as many progressive voters navigate emotions of exhaustion, disappointment and despair after Harris’ loss.
“Before we do anything about democracy, we have to fight our own despair,” mentioned one of many occasion’s first audio system, Rachel O’Leary Carmona, govt director of Girls’s March.
The comparative quiet contrasts sharply with the white-knuckled fury of the inaugural rally as huge crowds shouted calls for over megaphones and marched in pink pussyhats in response to Trump’s first election win.
“The reality is that it’s just hard to capture lightning in a bottle,” mentioned Tamika Middleton, managing director on the Girls’s March. “It was a really particular moment. In 2017, we had not seen a Trump presidency and the kind of vitriol that that represented.”
The motion fractured after that vastly profitable day of protests over accusations that it was not various sufficient. This 12 months’s rebrand as a Folks’s March is the results of an overhaul supposed to broaden the group’s enchantment. Saturday’s demonstration promoted themes associated to feminism, racial justice, anti-militarization and different points and can finish with discussions hosted by varied social justice organizations.
The Folks’s March is uncommon within the “vast array of issues brought together under one umbrella,” mentioned Jo Reger, a sociology professor who researches social actions at Oakland College in Rochester, Michigan. Girls’s suffrage marches, for instance, had been centered on a particular objective of voting rights.
For a broad-based social justice motion such because the march, conflicting visions are unattainable to keep away from and there’s “immense pressure” for organizers to fulfill everybody’s wants, Reger mentioned. However she additionally mentioned some discord isn’t essentially a foul factor.
“Often what it does is bring change and bring in new perspectives, especially of underrepresented voices,” Reger mentioned.
Middleton, of the Girls’s March, mentioned an enormous demonstration just like the one in 2017 will not be the objective of Saturday’s occasion. As an alternative, it’s to focus consideration on a broader set of points — girls’s and reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, immigration, local weather and democracy — fairly than centering it extra narrowly round Trump.
“We’re not thinking about the march as the endgame,” Middleton mentioned. “How do we get those folks who show up into organizations and into their political homes so they can keep fighting in their communities long term?”
Related Press writers Gary Fields, Ellen Knickmeyer and Mike Pesoli contributed to this report.
Initially Printed: January 18, 2025 at 10:04 AM EST
