WASHINGTON — Damia Mendoza carried a sign Saturday on 12th Street SW with her friends from middle school with slogans including, “I don’t dress to provoke you” and “A woman’s place is in the House, the Senate and the Freaking Oval Office!”

Mendoza, a sophomore studying policy studies and philosophy at Syracuse University, hit the streets of Washington on Saturday among tens of thousands of men and women joining the Women’s March on Washington, a demonstration advocating for women’s rights following the inauguration of President Donald Trump on Friday.

There were also hundreds of other “sister marches” in both the United States and around the world after Trump, the 45th president of the United States who made several disparaging comments about women throughout his campaign, was sworn into Office the day before.

The movement began after Teresa Shook, a retired attorney in Hawaii, organized a Facebook group to plan a march following the 2016 presidential election, according to The Washington Post. Within a day, about 10,000 people responded saying they would be participating. Bus permits requested for the march were three times more than the number of requests made for Trump’s inauguration, according to The Hill.

“I think there is a lot of stigma toward women because of the way they dress, because of makeup, because of the shapes of their bodies,” Mendoza said. “… Even though the society has made progress, there is still a lot to do.”

Overwhelming crowd

The nation’s capital was the epicenter for the Women’s March, attracting about 500,000 people, per media reports. The size of the crowd was equivalent to 10 times the Carrier Dome’s capacity.

Similar events took place in more than 670 locations including New York City; Chicago; Juneau, Alaska; Tel Aviv; Barcelona; Mexico City and London, according to The Washington Post. Worldwide, more than a million people participated in the march overall.

Although it is difficult to precisely count the number of protesters, the Women’s March could be the largest protest since the 2004 pro-choice March for Women’s Lives protest in Washington, where an estimated 500,000 to 1.1 million people attended.

Nancy Levine from Florida said Saturday’s march was bigger than the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom led by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963, where King delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech.

Earlier Saturday, a station announcement at Rosslyn Metro station in Virginia declared that it would take about 30 minutes for people to board a train. Protesters occupied the entirety of the upper level platform heading to downtown D.C. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority said in a tweet that Saturday’s Metro was 1 million.

Scenes from the street

By 10:30 a.m. Saturday, people had already filled up eight blocks between 4th Street SW and 12th Street SW, making it difficult for marchers to move forward toward a stage where speakers such as filmmaker Michael Moore and singer Alicia Keys addressed the crowd.

On the corner of Independence Avenue and 12th Street SW — near the U.S. Department of Agriculture Administration Building and Smithsonian Metro station — the marchers were already completely packed in. Nevertheless, people continued to flood into Independence Avenue, where the march was supposed to take place Saturday afternoon after the speeches.

One block of 12th Street was overwhelmed within half an hour, as people gushed in from the nearby L’Enfant Plaza Metro station around 1:20 p.m. Cell service was sporadic, and receiving and making phone calls was difficult.

The demonstrators brought a wide variety of colorful signs with them. One topless female demonstrator, who taped black tape across her nipples, held up a sign urging people to desexualize the female body. Some wore red baseball caps, mocking Trump’s “Make America Great Again” caps with the words “WTF America” sewed on the front.

Moriah Ratner | Staff Photographer 

Eileen Dunne, a marcher from Maryland, wore Victorian-era clothing — a blue and white laced hoop skirt, a black robe and a pink bonnet — and walked alongside four others who held a sign that said the year is not 1817.

“We are afraid that the new president’s policies are taking us back not 50 years, not 75 years, but 200 years,” said Dunne, whose nephew attends SU. “… Everybody that passes us has been saying, ‘It’s true. It’s true. It’s so scary.’”

The Associated Press sent a news alert around 1:20 p.m. stating that because of the massive turnout, there wouldn’t be a formal march. Within 20 minutes, however, an organizer announced the march would proceed with a different route, drawing deafening cheers from the crowd.

Tales of others

A block away from Independence Avenue, Justin Mullins, wearing Trump’s well-known “Make America Great Again” red baseball cap, was looking at his map trying to figure out how to get away from the crowd.

Mullins, a Trump supporter from Tennessee traveling with his family, said he was glad the march took place for protesters, allowing them to exercise their First Amendment rights.

Wearing pro-Trump apparel in a march protesting Trump, he said he “may be” afraid of his safety in the back of his mind.

“I don’t want to give into that though,” he said. “I think it’s my right to wear this. I don’t agree with necessarily everything they are doing, but I am not going to attack them for it. So I am going to assume they are going to give me the same respect — if not, that’s too bad,” he said.

While the Women’s March was aimed at addressing women’s rights issues, the march drew some people concerned with other issues such as the environment and health care.

Sara Carpenter of Queensbury, New York was holding a white board that read: “My husband’s CHEMO costs $10,000 per month.” She said her husband was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 2000, and it became mutated and aggressive in 2014. He’s taking a medication called Imbruvica that costs $10,000 per month.

Even though Carpenter said he is healthy now and is able to afford the medication through his insurance, owing to former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, she also said he could be dead within a year if he can’t take the medication.

Trump’s pledge and recent actions to begin repealing the health care law, she said, are “mortifying.”

Carpenter said she drove eight hours by herself to attend the march to not only promote social justice, but also health care justice.

“This is just a way for me to share that particular way that Donald Trump’s policies will affect our family,” she said.

Published on January 22, 2017 at 4:03 pm

Contact Satoshi: ssugiyam@syr.edu | @SatoshiJournal