The day after President Trump’s inauguration, millions of marchers for the Women’s March on Washington gathered in the capital and in many other cities around the world to create an atmosphere of solidarity against hatred.
As sexism charged the 2016 presidential election, Americans aware of prejudice waded through the misogyny and wondered how reality had been twisted into cartoonish proportions.
However, the implicit — and often explicit — hate against women was no mistake. Neither was the victory of a definitively misogynistic man against the first female presidential candidate from a major political party. It was a direct response to fears of equality, empathy and solidarity manifesting itself in a palpable wave of hateful mistreatment of all “othered” people.
The unjust mischaracterizations and attacks, whether irritatingly ignorant or dangerously consequential, threatened the treatment of large groups of Americans and the livelihoods of individuals and families.
The Women’s March and its sister marches represent more than a stand against a president in the hours after his inauguration. At its core, it reminds us of the political power of feminism to erase hate and the unifying strength of activism.
An estimated minimum of 500,000 marchers gathered in Washington, D.C., alone Saturday.
The sister marches that took place around the world had an estimate of just fewer than five million attendees.
Cities across the country had marches, and bigger events occurred in Los Angeles; New York City; Chicago; Seattle; Portland, Oregon; Boston; Denver; and Austin, Texas. Hundreds of other marches, from gatherings in the snow of Utah to the streets of Tennessee, took place.
Outside the U.S., marches took place in Mexico, Canada, Spain, France, Italy, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil.
People gathered in London; Bangkok; Cape Town, South Africa; Stockholm; Nairobi, Kenya; San Jose, Costa Rica; and Erbil, Iraq.
Solidarity even reached the South Pole, where CNN reported Saturday that scientists and tourists sailed through Antarctica’s waters with signs in solidarity to advocate for environmental and scientific causes.
Both ill-intentioned and well-meaning commentaries attempt to flick away the relevance and core objectives of these marches. After each disturbingly dark time in feminist history, media outlets are quick to pronounce the movement dead only to be proven wrong by an outpouring of support.
Recently, reporting from Slate chose to treat feminism as a club, not a political movement, and aggregated traditionally surmised “women’s issues” under a conflated definition of feminism by publicizing Texas’ New Wave Feminist group and its removal from the Women’s March registry for pro-life and anti-choice stances.
In spite of faux forecasting, feminists, women and their allies gathered in historic fashion Saturday. They gathered in a celebration of themselves, their neighbors and the American principles they believe in. They gathered in a promise to work harder to accept critiques of those whose adversities are compounded by race, creed and orientation, and follow the direction of those who know best. They gathered in a vision for the future.
The streets are cleared, but they’re still marching.
