Hundreds of thousands of women filled the streets of major US cities to lead an unprecedented wave of international protests against US President Donald Trump, mocking and denouncing the new US leader the day after his inauguration.
Women activists, outraged by Trump’s campaign rhetoric and behavior they found to be especially misogynistic, on Saturday spearheaded scores of marches in the US and sympathy rallies around the world.
Organizers said they drew about 5 million protesters in all, far surpassing crowd expectations.
Photo: AFP
The demonstrations also highlighted strong discontent over Trump’s comments and policy positions toward a wide range of groups, including Mexican immigrants, Muslims, the disabled and environmentalists.
In contrast to the heated, often shrill tone of the presidential campaign, and the grim imagery of “American carnage” Trump evoked in his inaugural address, the mood during Saturday’s protests was largely upbeat, even festive.
Chanting such slogans as, “We need a real leader, not a creepy tweeter,” and “Hey-hey, ho-ho, Donald Trump has got to go,” many marchers wore knitted pink cat-eared “pussy hats” in a reference to Trump’s boast, in a 2005 video made public weeks before the election, about grabbing women by the genitals.
Photo: AFP
While women constituted the bulk of the demonstrators, many were accompanied by husbands, boyfriends and children.
The planned centerpiece of the protests, a Women’s March on Washington, appeared to draw larger crowds than turned out a day earlier to witness Trump’s swearing-in on the steps of the US Capitol.
No official estimates of the turnout were available, but it clearly exceeded the 200,000 marchers projected in advance by organizers, filling long stretches of downtown Washington around the White House and the National Mall.
Photo: AFP
Hundreds of thousands more women thronged New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver and Boston, adding to a public outpouring of mass dissent against Trump unmatched in modern US politics for a new president’s first full day in office.
So-called Sister March organizers estimated 750,000 demonstrators swarmed the streets of Los Angeles, one of the largest of Saturday’s gatherings.
Police said the turnout there was as big or bigger than a 2006 pro-immigration march that drew 500,000.
Photo: AFP
About 400,000 marchers assembled in New York City, according to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, though organizers put the number there at 600,000.
The Chicago event grew so large that organizers staged a rally rather than trying to parade through the city. Police said more than 125,000 people attended, while sponsors estimated the crowd at 200,000, the same tally they reported for Boston and Denver.
Smaller protests were held in such cities as Seattle, Portland, Oregon, Madison, Wisconsin and Bismarck, North Dakota.
Photo: EPA
The protests, mostly peaceful, illustrated the depth of division in a country still reeling from the bitterly fought election campaign. Trump stunned the world by defeating Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, a former US secretary of state and first lady who made history as the first woman nominated for president by a major US political party.
Pam Foster, a resident of Ridgway, Colorado, said the atmosphere in Washington reminded her of mass protests during the 1960s and 1970s against the Vietnam War and in favor of civil rights and women’s rights.
“I’m 58 years old and I can’t believe we have to do this again,” Foster said.
Although Republicans now control the White House and both houses of the US Congress, Trump faces entrenched opposition from wide segments of the public, in contrast with the honeymoon period new presidents typically experience when first taking office.
A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found Trump had the lowest favorability rating of any incoming US president since the 1970s.
Women-led protests against Trump, who has vowed that US policy would be based on the principle of “America first,” also were staged in Sydney, London, Tokyo and other cities across Europe and Asia.
“This is only the beginning,” Evvie Harmon, global coordinator for the Women’s March, told the Guardian. “We are not going away.”
“This is a mass mobilization and we are going to take this network of people and we are going to get them to lobby their members of Congress, call their governors — it’s going on from here,” she said.
Sister March sponsors boasted about 670 gatherings around the world in solidarity with the Washington event, including Berlin, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam and Cape Town, estimating a global turnout of more than 4.6 million participants tallied through online march registrations, although those numbers could not be independently verified.
In the UK, from 80,000 to 100,000 people joined the Women’s March on London, with another 14 marches in towns and cities across Britain, including Manchester, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Leeds and Belfast.
The London march began at the US embassy in London at noon, before snaking its way around the streets of the capital and finishing with a rally in Trafalgar Square.
Protesters waved banners with slogans like “Special relationship, just say no” and “Nasty women unite,” and were joined by London Mayor Sadiqi Khan and several Labour Party MPs.
Trump on Saturday in a Twitter post wrote: “I am honored to serve you, the great American People, as your 45th President of the United States!”
Attending an interfaith service at Washington National Cathedral before visiting the CIA headquarters, Trump made no mention of the protests, but he angrily attacked media reports, including photographs, showing that crowds at Friday’s inaugural were smaller than those seen in 2009 and 2013.
Saturday’s march in Washington overwhelmed the city’s Metro subway system, with enormous crowds reported and some stations temporarily forced to turn away riders.
The Metro reported 275,000 rides as of 11am on Saturday, 82,000 more than the 193,000 reported at the same time on Friday’s Inauguration Day, and eight times the normal Saturday volume.
The peaceful atmosphere of Saturday’s march contrasted sharply with unrest the day before, when groups of black-clad anti-establishment activists, among hundreds of anti-Trump protesters, smashed windows, set vehicles on fire and fought with riot police, who responded with stun grenades.
Washington prosecutors said about US$100,000 in damage had been done and 230 adults and five minors had been arrested.
Clinton won the popular vote in the Nov. 8 presidential election by about 2.9 million votes and exceeded Trump’s support among women voters by more than 10 percentage points. Trump, however, easily prevailed in the state-by-state Electoral College vote that actually determines the outcome of the race.
Trump offered few if any olive branches to his opponents in his inauguration speech.
“He has never seemed particularly concerned about people who oppose him,” said Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.
However, the lawmakers who Trump needs onside to achieve his policy goals may be more sensitive to the show of mass opposition demonstrated by the anti-Trump rallies, Levesque said.
“Members of Congress are very sensitive to the public mood, and many of them are down here this week to see him,” Levesque said.
Additional reporting by the Guardian
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