Protesting an Inauguration—What a Difference Four Years Make

The Women's March on Washington, January 21, 2020.

Four years ago after Donald Trump won an Electoral College victory over Hillary Clinton despite the fact that she won a clear majority of the popular vote outrage spread quickly, especially among women.  Feminists and their allies deplored the ascent of the misogynist, serial sex abuser, chronic liar, business fraud, charlatan, and sociopathic egomaniac.  So they did something about it.

Just a day after the 2016 election Teresa Shook of Hawaii created a Facebook event and invited friends to march on Washington in protest.  Several similar posts were made independently and soon the women and some feminist men discovered each other and began cooperating.  None of them were marquee names in the Women’s Movement, the Clinton campaign, or the Democratic Party.  In addition to middle class white women an informal core group of organizers included African Americans and other People of Color, immigrants, Muslims, members of the LGBTQ communities, and other oppressed groups.

The logo of the Women's March on Washington.

Their efforts were a classic example of bottom-up organizing taking advantage of new social media tools to create an organic movement.  And they did it in an astonishingly short time.  As planning went forward on a March scheduled for January 21, the two days after the inauguration organizers did get the endorsement and technical support from major organizations including Planned Parenthood, the Natural Resources Defense Council, AFL–CIO, Amnesty International USA, the Mothers of the Movement, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the National Organization for Women, MoveOn.org, Human Rights Watch, Code Pink, Black Girls Rock!, the NAACP, the American Indian Movement, Emily’s List, Oxfam, Greenpeace USA, and the League of Women Voters.  All of those organizations would help recruit marchers from their own memberships and be represented on the speaking platform the day of the march.  But so did scores of other less well known and local groups from a broader movement that was beginning to characterize itself as the Resistance.

March organizer made it clear from the beginning that they planned to adhere to “the nonviolent ideology of the Civil Rights movement.”  In addition to keep the momentum for change going instead of being dissipated in a one-time cathartic event organizers posted the 10 Actions for the first 100 Days campaign for joint activism.

Despite Trump's claim that his inauguration drew the biggest crowds in history--the first Big Lie of his administration--the Women's March dwarfed his pathetic turnout.

While organizers had originally expected over 200,000 people, the march ended up drawing between 440,000 to 500,000 in Washington D.C.  It dwarfed the feeble turn-out for Trump’s inauguration by at least three to one and probably more.

The march was famous for the knitted pink pussy cat caps that many of the marchers wore initiated by Krista Suh and Jayna Zweiman.  More than 100,000 people down-loaded the pattern for the cap and dozens of small providers vended them on line.  The design was inspired by the resemblance of the top corners of the hats to cat ears and attempts to reclaim the derogatory term pussy, from Trump’s widely reported 2005 remarks that women would let him “grab them by the pussy.”

Women flying all the way from Alaska showed off their Pink Pussy hats on the flight.

In addition to the hundreds of thousands pouring into the nation’s capital for the protest, hundreds of officially unrelated sister marchers were organized in cities big and small across the United States, Canada, and the world, including a massive march in Chicago which I joined along with three Metra train carloads from McHenry County.  Between 3,267,134 and 5,246,670 people participated in these marches in this country, approximately 1.0 to 1.6 % of the U.S. population making it by far the largest mass protest in American history. Worldwide participation has been estimated at over seven million.

Marching with women of Tree of Life UU Congregation to the rallying point of the Chicago Women's March on January 21, 2017

Nor did the movement fade away.  Annual marches continued and in 2016 there was a special Fall March to the Polls event to boost registration and voting in the midterm elections.

This year due to the Coronavirus pandemic and the heavy security in Washington after the storming of the Capitol by Trump’s minions and White supremacist insurrectionaries, organizers discouraged mass events.  Instead a number of virtual events were posted around the country.

Compare a genuine mass movement of the people to the shady plot to overthrow democracy this year.  Don’t let anyone try to tell you, as some right-wing media is trying to do, that the two events had anything in common.