When Maya—who asked that her surname not be used for fear of losing her job—learned about The People’s March in Washington, D.C., on the Saturday before Donald Trump’s second inauguration, she knew she had to be there.
“I’ve been a nurse in an OB-GYN practice in Tampa, Florida, for three years and abortion restrictions directly impact my work,” she told The Progressive. “I recently had a patient who developed complications. She needed an abortion but we had to turn her away because her fever was ‘only’ 101.2. She literally could have died.”
Other marchers were also motivated by the attacks on reproductive healthcare. But that was just one of the issues that brought them to the nation’s capital.
Zach Roberts
A woman wearing a Planned Parenthood branded scarf yells at anti-abortion protesters who tried to disrupt The People’s March.
In fact, tens of thousands of people attended one of the three feeder marches in D.C. operating under the umbrella of The People’s March. The three marches, which began at different locales before converging, were loosely organized around themes including defending democracy, ending war, protecting the environment, supporting immigrants, and fighting against policies that stoke racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, and antisemitism. Some of the signs, chants, and speakers also called for D.C. statehood and representation in Congress. Support for feminism was a unifying thread, with The Women’s March centering much of the organizing and outreach for the event.
The huge crowd, which greatly exceeded pre-event estimates of 50,000, marched more than one mile through D.C., culminating in a “People’s Fair” near the Lincoln Memorial. There, organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Plan C Pills, the Sierra Club, Democratic Socialists of America, Generation Common Good, Planned Parenthood, and the FreeHer Institute distributed literature and talked to rally-goers about their work.
Zach Roberts
Before the People’s March officially started its walk to the Lincoln Memorial, speakers motivated the assembled protesters motivated chants in Farragut Square.
The mood was upbeat, and the crowd, which was age-diverse but mostly white, carried homemade signs and banners that attested to the connected issues that brought them to the march: Love Not Hate Makes American Great; Education Not Deportation; Stop the 4th Reich; America’s Disgrace: The Sequel; Fuck Trump; Leviticus 19:35-36, When a Foreigner Resides Among You In Your Land, Do Not Mistreat Them; Free Palestine; Feminism Not Militarism; Blessed are the Peacemakers; Socialism Beats Fascism; A Corpse for Organ Donation Should Not Have More Rights than a Living Woman; Protect Trans Kids; Save Mother Earth; Our Diversity is our Strength.
“If we don't protest, it will seem as though there is acceptance of Trump’s policies, which will make it easier for him to push them through,” said fourteen-year-old Jackson Fleck, who came to D.C. from Lakewood, Colorado, with his mother, Karlynn Cory, and his sister, seventeen-year-old Wava Fleck. “The United States can become a police state unless we stop him.”
Zach Roberts
A woman holds a sign that summarizes what many of the People’s March attendees expressed: “The system has failed us!”
Ken J. Terry of Sheffield, Massachusetts, agrees that developing a robust, sustained resistance is imperative. “There has to be a tide of public disapproval,” he said. For Terry, proposed tariffs on imported goods and anticipated deportations of undocumented people are major worries. But his concern extends far beyond Trump’s articulated threats, into something far more menacing: “I don’t want to live in a country that is fascist,” he says.
Likewise, Olivia Stow, a twenty-five-year-old kindergarten teacher from Charlottesville, Virginia, told The Progressive that she fears the loss of democracy, and came to the protest for both personal and political reasons. On one hand, she said, she worries about her access to reproductive health care. On the other, she is concerned about her ability to teach if increased restrictions on books and discussion topics in the classroom impede her ability to instruct her low-income, largely immigrant students. “I’m in a Title I school,” she said which receives supplemental federal assistance because a majority of its students come from low-income households. “Everything falls on us, from students’ need for food, to their need for social and emotional support, health care, housing, and safety from gang violence. [Teachers] should have much more help.” But Stow does not anticipate that teachers will get needed assistance if Linda McMahon, Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Education, is confirmed.
Zach Roberts
Attendees of the People’s March in Farragut Square hold homemade signs expressing anger at the U.S. Government and referencing the words of Luigi Mangione, who allegedly killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Disinformation was another prevalent concern for protestors. The proliferation of “alternative facts”—including rumors about immigrants eating cats and dogs and a deep-state conspiracy to microchip vaccine recipients—brought Rochester, New York, resident Deni Smith to the protest. “During the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic I was working as a physical therapist in an Intensive Care Unit,” Smith said. “I’d leave work each day after seeing people die in front of my eyes, and there would be a picket line in front of the hospital with people screaming that we were Nazis because we wanted everyone to be vaccinated. It was a very dark time.”
Smith has since left that job, but is nonetheless committed to fighting back against media manipulation, which she sees as the distortion of facts to sway public opinion. And while she says that she felt that it was important to be in D.C. on January 18, she understands that most resistance will take place at the local level, with grassroots community groups fighting harmful social policies while simultaneously meeting people’s day-to-day needs for information and care, from access to abortion pills to sanctuary, from requests for clothing and food to legal counsel for those threatened with deportation or eviction. She sees Trump’s ascent as both an opportunity and a danger.
Zach Roberts
Attendees of the People’s March carried homemade signs that expressed a wide range of grievances against the incoming Trump Administration.
In addition to the People’s March in D.C., more than 350 local actions took place on January 18 in cities, suburbs, and rural communities in all fifty states. The marches, speak-outs, and rallies made clear that there will be massive resistance to Trump’s efforts to deport our neighbors, cut social welfare programs, privatize public education, reduce taxes for the rich, further erode women’s bodily autonomy, and demolish the separation between church and state.
For Karlynn Cory, the People’s March was a necessary coalescence of like-minded Americans in preparation for Day One of the Trump Administration. “The fight has just begun,” she says.