The Women’s March on Washington and its sister marches are already being called the biggest one-day protests in US history — according to The Women’s March website, nearly million people made it out this weekend to nearly 700 marches held in all seven continents and over 60 countries. On Friday, we experienced a collective nightmare in which the worst man in the entire United States, Donald J. Trump, was sworn in as our next president. So on Saturday, we marched. Not everybody marched, of course. A lot of people didn’t want to, others had to work or had health issues preventing them from partaking. But holy shit did a lot of us get out there and march.
In Washington DC at least 1.3 million people gathered for The Women’s March, an event with an explicitly intersectional platform and a diverse list of speakers and performers who raised awareness about issues often ignored by mainstream white middle-class feminism. In Chicago so many turned out for the rally that they had to cancel the march for public safety concerns. In Boston, an anticipated 25,000 marchers turned out to be at least 175,000. Over 500,000 protesters flooded Midtown Manhattan, marching from the United Nations to Trump Towers. Los Angeles expected 25,000 and got 750,000, its most popular protest in over a decade. St. Paul, Minnesota police are estimating between 90,000 and 100,000 marchers. Austin, Texas broke the record for the largest gathering in Texas history.
In New Mexico, Utah, Alaska and Idaho, they marched in the snow. They marched in small towns you’ve probably never heard of: in Lander, Wyoming, in Lake Erie, Ohio; Yakima, Washington; and in Zebulon, Georgia. They marched all over the world, in cities including but certainly not limited to Oslo, London, Auckland, Nairobi, Guam, Toronto, Amsterdam, Cape Town, Melbourne, Sydney, Mexico City, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Bangkok, Montreal, Geneva and New Delhi.
They even marched in Paradise Bay, Antarctica.
Pre-march photo! #womensMarchAntarctica ❤️🐧 pic.twitter.com/NaRyZaIvsM
— linda z 🐧 (@lindazunas) January 21, 2017
And, of course, as is our way, the queers and lesbians and bisexual women were out in droves. The flagship event in Washington DC, as viewed via YouTube livestream, had the soothing quality of somehow always managing to keep queer musician and A-Camp fave Be Steadwell in the frame, or else lesbian folk/blues artist Toshi Reagon, seated nearby with her guitar. Speakers included trans activist Janet Mock, lesbian activist and author Angela Davis, the Astrea Lesbian Foundation For Justice’s J. Bob Alotta, and writer and Transgender Law Center associate Raquel Willis. Performers included Janelle Monáe, Samantha Ronson, The Indigo Girls and Climbing PoeTree. Among the DC marchers: Ellen Page, Abby Wambach, Hari Nef, JD Samson, Amandla Stenberg, Jill Soloway, Evan Rachel Wood, Cameron Esposito, St. Vincent, Lea DeLaria, Ani DiFranco, Lily Tomlin, Carrie Brownstein, Danielle Brooks, Lauren Jauregui, Monica Raymund, Rhea Butcher and Sally Kohn. Also, Scarlett Johansson has acquired a lesbian haircut. Just saying.
In Los Angeles, GLAAD President & CEO Sarah Kate Ellis spoke at the rally that also featured transgender activist and actress Laverne Cox. On social media, posts from the Los Angeles march popped up from queer celebrities like Miley Cyrus, Alexandra Billings, Rowan Blanchard, Hannah Hart, Jenny Owen Youngs, Kesha and Kate Moennig.
I was in Ann Arbor, a college town with a long history of liberal activism that attracted around 11,000 marchers for an afternoon rally, including lots of students but also a lot of parents with small children.
This is, hopefully, the beginning of a genuine protest movement that will only grow as Trump continues, against all odds and common sense, to remain president of this country day after day. Seasoned activists saw a lot of young people come out and march for the first time this weekend, but undoubtedly many of these protesters, even the young ones, have come out before. We’ve marched for Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street, or we marched against Prop 8 or other LGBTQ causes. This is important to talk about because extended and crucial conversations that came out of those movements have already helped shape this new one. Specifically, The Women’s March has benefited from past conversations around racism within the social justice community and specifically the tendency of white feminists to push their issues into center stage, failing to consider the existence of, let alone promote or give a platform to, the causes that matter most to people of color. Initially, the March seemed like more of the same White Feminism as before — its initial co-founders were two cis straight white women, retired attorney Teresa Shook of Hawai’i and Bob Bland, the founder of Manafacture New York. When Okayafrica’s Vanessa Wruble saw the event gathering steam on social media, she reached out to Bland and Shook to strongly suggest they get some women of color onto their team, and thus they immediately did so. Bob Bland now shares the national co-chair position with three women of color: Linda Sarsour (executive director of the Arab American Association of New York), Tamika D. Mallory (African-American civil rights activist and gun control advocate) and Carmen Perez (executive director of Harry Belafonte’s Gathering for Justice). From that point forward, most of the march’s initiatives were explicitly inclusive and intersectional, a tradition that must continue for future protests to be successful. The movement isn’t perfect by any means — for example, it seems to have some major blind spots w/r/t trans issues — but it does seem to be on the right track and is open to feedback and criticism. And now we have the internet, which’ll enable information to be disseminated and actions to be planned with far more ease than women’s movements past. Going forward, the onus will be on the most privileged marchers to continue showing up for issues that don’t impact them directly. The March’s website already has begun posting information on actions we can continue to take every day, starting this week with writing our senators.
So we didn’t get our first woman president — but for one day after Trump’s swearing-in, women ruled the world just the same. Look at these pictures of protests all over the world. Look at the Women’s March on the front pages of every newspaper.
And now, below, look at the LGBTQ people and LGBTQ Allies I found all over Instagram, standing up for themselves or standing up on our behalf. There are literally hundreds of marches I didn’t include here, including many of the largest ones, due to time constraints, but I did my best!
This is DAY ONE. We have so much work left to do.
Ann Arbor, Michigan
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPisZIfjoW4/
Asheville, North Carolina
Atlanta, Georgia
Austin, Texas
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPiv2HtADpz/
Me and 40-50k others in the Texas capital city #WomensMarchOnAustin pic.twitter.com/qTwgdnRT8Z
— Larisa (@laurie2474) January 22, 2017
Berlin, Germany
Boston, Massachusetts
Brownsville, Texas
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPi1qrMjsdw/?taken-by=ezterr
Cheyenne, Wyoming
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPidNCkjY6l/
Chicago, Illinois
Dallas, Texas
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPicFWnA3sp/
Denver, Colorado
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPjsomSg-jH/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPjifx2D2BE/
Detroit, Michigan
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPieenqgrpI/
Houston, Texas
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPjIMTygY-j/
Indianapolis, Indiana
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPiXw0PDyC5/?taken-by=carooates
Jackson, Mississippi
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPjfnIqh9NE/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPiz7KdhABI/
Juneau, Alaska
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPihe7DF_cx/?tagged=womensmarchalaska
Key West, Florida
Kodiak, Alaska
Lansing, Michigan
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPi0dQvgG9l/?taken-by=khaleesi_wiley
London, England
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPiyMLjjSf7/
Los Angeles, California
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPi-zsflt6l/?taken-by=robinshoots
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPgj-EJAtbV/?taken-by=undocumedia
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPikXMeAwmD/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPiuM6uDMpE/?taken-by=amberrose
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPj4kytlSTt/?taken-by=jessesulli
Memphis, Tennessee
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPiz3fQAFGG/
Mexico City, Mexico
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPjAH6WAD_8/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPkvI6FDm34/
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Nashville, Tennessee
New Orleans, Louisiana
New York, New York
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPiuJYiDJ16/
O’ahu, Hawai’i
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPi-89BD63n/
Oakland, California
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPizoHRjIAn/?taken-by=dearjonesey
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPjDVa_BZMB/?taken-by=it_has_teeth
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPi9aVVAzH7/
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPi_zoqgIIF/?taken-at=194185
Orlando, Florida
Paris, France
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Phoenix, Arizona
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPjMcEFhM8E/
Portland, Oregon
I held this flag with so much pride and joy today, amongst the thousands who came out to Portland's #WomensMarch 💜👊🏽 pic.twitter.com/OIbqr6ESPW
— Sol (@angelitodelxsol) January 22, 2017
San Diego, California
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPjHO4lF6d6/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPkrTqPFUpq/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPk5MhBDCP2/
San Francisco, California
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPjNON4gsI_/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPi-8zQD2Mu/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPi-2RMDmbb/
Seattle, Washington
Spokane, Washington
St.Louis, Missouri
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPiUqdQg1qB/
St.Paul, Minnesota
Sydney, Australia
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPgnqr1l0_Q/
Topeka, Kansas
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPi031BgAY3/
Trenton, New Jersey
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPjF8dTglUV/
Vancouver, BC Canada
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPinqZEhARb/?taken-by=kewebster
Washington DC
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPi5JhABvMj/?taken-at=236471522
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPilRgpgKcV/
❤❤❤❤❤
<3 Thank you!
Also, I donated $20 to Autostraddle today. Thanks for all you do. Have some pizza.
i’m sorry that sounded flippant, i think. i’m just tired after this weekend, which had me thinking how exhausted the AS crew must be with all of these historic events, which prompted me to donate. Thank you AS for being here and doing what you do. <3
Heeeeyy! These numbers are awesome! I marched on D.C. yesterday. Can you please illuminate for us how and from where you got these head counts? I was convinced yesterday we were a million in D.C. but people who know crowds better than me said that we couldn’t be more than 500 thou. I want to be able to say more than “Autostraddle said…” How did you find these numbers? Did someone count heads in an aerial?
Thank you!
Kait
I had the same question; I clicked on the link provided and it said 2.9 million I think, though I didn’t check the google doc that that link cited.
ok the ref linked above says 2.9 million in the US, but within that article is another more recent article from the same site that says up to 4.5 million (politicusUSA), based on a UConn data guy’s final research estimates from aerial crowd photos. Woah!
http://www.politicususa.com/2017/01/22/womens-march-washington-sets-protest-record-estimated-3-6-4-5-million-marched.html
and here’s some annotaed refs of crowd tallies by city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Women's_March
The tweet I linked to with the DC numbers specifically was from a reporter who said 1.3 mil, and the sisters march worldwide number I got from the sisters march website!
Thanks Riese!
You are missing images from the Sundance, Standing Rock, Mexico City marches,
i’m missing images from 75% of the marches that happened! it took me 15 hours to find these pictures, unfortunately it would take all week and wordpress would crash if I went through every single demonstration.
Great people, great crowds, great signs, great excitement. I only wish that I could have been there.
Just hope and pray (if that is what you do) that the strength and enthusiasm the march shows continues. Remember, it took hundreds of demonstrations all across the country over a period of years to end the Vietnam war.
Getting rid of Trump, Pence and their accomplices will take that level of sustained effort.
Holy shit, Riese! This was amazing. But I would not recommend attempting to scroll to the comments.
This helps <3
Would we be able to make a reader-submitted gallery of queer signs? That would be fun. Plus, people who couldn’t go to the marches could make signs and submit them anyway.
Faves:
+That sky in Austin!
+ “I want a dyke for president”
+ “Taking the hinges off any door closed 2 trans women”
+ “I met God, She’s Black” / “God Loves Girls Who Love Girls”
+ “May the Fetus You Save Grow Up To Be a Bad Ass Lesbian Abortion Provider”
I clicked on the pic from Antarctica and learned that their march was called Penguins For Peace! Yay!
Still love this sign best, though!
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPiCe8UDmg6/?hl=en
oh man this resulted in many tears, much love for y’all <3
I am a gay woman and find all these protesters virtue signaling to other progressives quiet hilarious. The whole deal gets hyped by the media to make it look like something significant while we all know that their agenda got rejected relentlessly by the American people over the past 8 years. Obama single handedly wrecked the democratic party by pushing his radical progressive agenda. And no, don’t be dramatic, we won’t be forced to give up our marriages and live in concentration camps.
I do have a suggestion for another march, if you want to protest a real cause. Try protesting forced (child) marriages, honor killings and female genital mutilation in the name of islam. O, and if you are really up to it, book the next flight to Saudia Arabia and do a protest there and see how that works out for you. Maybe that will put things into perspective.
OK, Amtrak.
A more nuanced response.
The American people didn’t reject the “radical progressive agenda,” it won by nearly 3 million votes – and this despite extreme gerrymandering and voter suppression laws, Comey’s attempted sabotage, and Russian interference. The fact that this was the biggest protest in US history only further proves that Trumpism is deeply unpopular.
And Muslim men do not have a monopoly on misogyny. You can’t call out Islamic extremism if you’re not also willing to call out the Christian terrorist who shot up a Planned Parenthood or the collegiate swimmer who got away with rape. There are plenty more (including Trump himself, a confessed sexual predator???). We can protest them all.
uh huh glad you’re sure about the concentration camps
https://twitter.com/bejohnce/status/822922218002792448?s=09
As Jamie Ross said on his Twitter “I had no idea until today how much right wing men on Twitter cared about gender equality in the Middle East.”
https://twitter.com/JamieRoss7/status/822895319772000256
I’m not saying you’re a right wing man (you say you’re a gay woman after all) but it’s so comforting to know that you coincidentally share the same sentiment as those types of people that suddenly care about women in general, let alone women in the middle east!
These right wing men of course would never waster their time marching alongside their own country women in in the US (or any of the other places that stood in solidarity with their American protesters), but suddenly feel passionately enough to have a go at these same woman for taking their own stand, and trying to guilt trip them into not flying all the way to another country to protest when they wouldn’t even do it themselves.
Right wing man says (example in US) – ‘I believe that women’s inequality doesn’t exist, they are as equal as us, there is no discrimination at all, it’s a lie made up by women to just complain, to tear men down, to walk all over us when we’ve given them everything they should be grateful for. I won’t march with fellow country women to stand up against a sexist like Trump, but I will tell my fellow country women to go to another country to protest in instead of their own which they would have more power to change first. A foreign country and government will welcome you to protest in their country and you can protest against their varying laws as much as you like, but you should under no circumstances protest in your own country where the laws (and potentially changing laws) directly affect you. I, as a downtrodden man, will not protest with you in our own country where we can both make change together, but I will tell you to piss off and protest in a foreign country because other countries love it when you tell then what to do and won’t hurt you or condemn you in the process either. They give such freedoms to their own that you are welcome to do and say as you please because foreigners have a monopoly over the native population and government. I don’t care about my own country women most of the time, they’re lazy after all, get paid the same as me to do less, they benefit from an equality quota which bears no resemblance to the never questioned quota of men favouring other men for decades, but they should on my good advice protest for all woman kind for the both of us, and always protest in another country before their own. I will protest for human rights, but don’t embarrass me thinking women’s rights should be protested in the same vein, and go off to other countries so I don’t have to feel the discomfort of you saying my country cares less about you than it does me when clearly we are all happy because we are all treated the same.
I thought this reply would be too big to attach to AIMEE’s post, but the response thoughts come off the back of it.
1. Obama’s administration was not even that progressive. His failure to adequately prosecute the Wall Street bankers who practices led to the 2008 financial crisis was a pro Wall Street/unregulated capitalism.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/obamas-failure-to-mitigate-americas-foreclosure-crisis/510485/
2. Donald Trump is the natural conclusion of the Southern Strategy that the GOP have been cynically using since the 1960s. Open up a history book and learn how white identity politics formed this country’s current political system. I’d start with Black Reconstruction by WEB DuBois and White Rage by Carol Anderson. As for your assertion that concentration camps can’t happen in the United Stages, again open up a history book and learn that it did happen here. Ethnic cleansing has happened here.
3. Your assertion that marches are “virtue signaling” is laughable. Political protests and marches brought the reduction of state sanctioned child labor, suffrage for women, integrated colleges and a host of other social changes.
4. If you’re going to bring up crimes done in the name of Islam, don’t forget how Christian backed settler colonialism continues to deprive countries of their resources.
5. It is you who lack perspective. Both of how the current political climate has come about and how a real progressive political agenda looks.
Others have touched on Islam and Obama’s ‘radicalism’, and I will add that I would love to see the rightwing buzz term ‘virtue signalling’ disappear. I don’t believe in political purity; I have no ‘virtue’ to signal to anyone. I am bored with the notion that anyone who expresses solidarity is only doing it to promote a ‘virtuous’ appearance. It is the religious right that concerns itself with the projection of a hollow moralist image, not ‘radical progressives’.
This is a seriously awesome compilation. Thank you for putting it together.
fantastic! i went to the march in san miguel de allende, and it was mostly american seniors marching, shouting in their gringo accents “solidaridad!” like, there is a lot of intersectional work that needs to be done when it comes to american retirees in mexico, but it really made me feel hopeful to see these older men and women trying to be intersectional, using their spanish, and attempting (but failing a bit) to pay tribute to the history of resistance in mexico. the focus on intersectionality at the washington march i think really trickled down. obviously conversations still need to happen–it wasn’t perfect and we’re not done yet–but i feel very hopeful about intersectional feminism going forward.
Gorgeous, all of it!!! <3
Amandla has my heart
This was just so beautiful to look at in sickbed, thank you Riese.
I’m rather irritated that my body did not cooperate with me this weekedn because my sign was going to handing off me leaving my hands free to take pictures of the New Orleans’ Women’s March. Cause down here we’re a creative people who can be viciously on point(Krewe du Vieux, I mean you) and hilarious.
One section of the march looks like it make have had jazz funeral theme
I don’t how it went down, but it is possible it was organised like walking krewe parade with different section dedicated to a certain aspect of the general theme.
And hey if anybody going to be in New Orleans for the Mardi Gras season go see Muses on February 23rd, which is the Thursday before Mardi Gras. I have a feeling might kinda like feel the Women’s March PtII this year.
Also the Bearded Oysters will be there.
At work an older gentlemen said there is no way there will be a million women marching. The million man march failed in 1995. Well I said unlike that march its not just all black men. Its basically half the population. Plus I am sure they organizers can find a million women in the DC area. Of course what I didn’t know was it was all over the US. Well he was wrong.
I keep coming back to this post over and over and I still haven’t made it through to the end without crying.
Thanks so much for including me!! ? Kaden (IG: @k.lovin)