Women may not have found their place in the White House yet, but they certainly found it in the protest movement against its current occupant Saturday.
It’s being estimated that more than half a million people — the vast majority of them women — flooded the National Mall and surrounding streets Saturday for the Women’s March on Washington.
The event came on the heels of President Donald Trump’s inauguration Friday and appears to have attracted a larger crowd.
Among them were three generations of Linda Mooth’s family. Mooth, 69, came to the march with her daughter, Kathy Newsome, and granddaughter, Lucy Newsome — all of Greensboro.
“I thought we should all come,” Kathy Newsome said. “I have so many friends who’ve said, ‘I wish I could come with my mom.’”
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“And I’ve had so many friends who said they’d like to have come with their daughters,” Mooth said.
The march was one of the largest of several hundred that took place around the globe Saturday, as much to protest the new president as to stand for women’s rights. Trump’s comments on women and immigrants during the election and his recent cabinet picks seem to have built a large, broad coalition of Americans opposed to his policies, positions and rhetoric.
As several small groups of counter-protesters pointed out, though, that coalition wasn’t large enough, or united enough, to defeat Trump in November.
Marchers, many of them in pink knit “pussy hats,” held signs with slogans like “This is what a feminist looks like” and “Love trumps hate.” While women’s equality was front and center, the crowd also decried Trump’s stance on abortion, immigration, LGBT rights, climate change, health care and more.
Maura Kern, of Greensboro, held a sign that read “support women and change the world.”
Kern said she was awed by the size of the crowd.
“This feels so hopeful,” she said.
The massive crowd covered the National Mall for the 3-hour long rally featuring organizers, activists and celebrities.
“We are linked,” said Gloria Steinem, famed women’s rights activist and one of the event’s honorary co-chairs. “We are not ranked. And this is a day that will change us forever because we are together. Each of us individually and collectively will never be the same again.
“When we elect a possible president, we too often go home. We’ve elected an impossible president, we’re never going home.”
By the time the actual march was set to start, the entire route had been engulfed in participants. Instead, organizers encouraged marchers to use alternate routes to reach the Ellipse. That directive sent marchers streaming down Pennsylvania Avenue, toward the White House, but downtown streets were so choked with marchers that, at times, they came to a standstill.
“Welcome to your first day, we will not go away,” marchers chanted.
Despite hectic conditions, the crowd seemed to keep high spirits throughout the day and often broke out into random cheers and chants — everything from “my body, my choice” to “America needs a leader, not a racist Tweeter.”
A group of Wake Forest University women posted themselves along Pennsylvania Avenue to watch the crowds wash by and join in on some of the cheering and jeering.
Among the students was 20-year-old Ashley Davis, a Wake Forest junior. Davis said she went into the march worried about the representation women of color, trans women and queer women would have at the march — a concern shared by others in early days of the march planning.
A group of diverse women of color was brought on to help plan the event and ensure it was inclusive and represented a broad group of women and their issues. Davis said that though the event was dominated by white women, she was heartened to see so many people come out and stand out for issues like LGBT rights, the Black Lives Matter movement and more.
“I thought it was important to come and lift my voice, since I was granted the privilege to do this,” she said.
The Wake Forest University Women’s Center chartered a bus to bring 40 students to the march. Paige Meltzer, director of the center, said the center arranged the trip after hearing about students trying to find a way. The bus filled within 2 1/2 hours of tickets being made available and a wait list of about 40 additional students also filled, Meltzer said.
“It’s really once-in-a-lifetime to be here and come together with women from across the country to say ‘women’s rights are human rights,’” Meltzer said. “To give students the chance to see that, we couldn’t pass it up.”
Another group of Wake Forest students, participants in the university’s Wake the Vote program that ran throughout the past year’s political season, was also in the nation’s capital over the weekend. They attended both inaugural events Friday and the march on Saturday.
The largely peaceful day turned tense late in the afternoon as demonstrators surrounded a pro-Trump float on F Street, just blocks from the White House. The float with about 20 Trump supporters got blocked in by hundreds, if not thousands, of marchers. Heated words were exchanged for about 30 minutes, while the float was stuck.
Police had to clear a path for the float to exit, but they too had trouble getting through the crowds. Some demonstrators made a brief show of trying to hold a line blocking the police cars, but were ultimately moved out of the way.
There were no arrests or escalations of violence during the incident as police eventually cleared a path and the float drove on.
A smaller skirmish broke out earlier in the day between Trump supporters at a small “Bikers for Trump” event set up along Pennsylvania Avenue and marchers who wandered over.
Robert Nunnery, a Trump supporter from Fayetteville, N.C., said he was glad marchers were having their say Saturday.
Nunnery, who attended the inauguration Friday, said he wanted to see all sides of American democracy in action.
“This weekend shows what America is about,” he said. “We had a peaceful transfer of power and today people are out, sharing their viewpoint. I’m glad this can happen.”
Thousands of marchers attended the event by way of charter bus, many leaving in the early hours of Saturday morning and returning about 24 hours later.
Carol Lawless organized a caravan of three buses that left Greensboro — several of the dozens of buses that carried North Carolina women to the march.
“My friend said let’s get a group together and go,” Lawless said.
So she signed up on the website Rally Bus, a group that crowdfunds charter buses to big events. The first bus filled up quickly, Lawless said. And then the second, and then the third.
“We probably could have done another one, but three was all I could handle.”
Holly Woodward, of High Point, was among the 150 who rode up with Lawless’ group. Woodward said she went up the march without knowing anyone. Six hours later, she stepped out into D.C.’s northwest quarter with a group of fast friends.
“I thought, I can’t not participate,” Woodward said. “It’s about time we start talking about equality.”