It WAS a women's march. Many men and children made the journey, but this was an event organized by women, it was the response of women to the sexual predator who now lives in the White House, and the collective voice of this phenomenal outpouring was decidedly female. I marched for my mother, who is too old to march but who is still standing up for the sisterhood.
I'm staying at a motel in Falls Church, Virginia. I tried the motel shuttle to the subway, but it was full of women heading out. I called cab. It was 8:30 in the morning. Several hundred people were already massed in front of the station. I finally clawed my way into a packed car full of pussy hats. We spent the first three hours in a claustrophobic mob in the Mall. The sheer size of the crowd caused the plans for the event to be thrown out before the march even began. There was no visible organization and no instructions. After 1 pm people just started moving out. I ended up marching up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, but the entire Federal District was completely filled by protesters. The march was almost impossible to process visually. The crowd stretched on forever, in every direction, filling every boulevard and side street, for hour after hour. I will never forget the sights I saw today.
It was a lovely day, full of energy, good humor, helpfulness, and earnestness. Kindness was a major theme today. Our Predator-In-Chief was the primary focus, but the only real flash of group anger was when we passed the Trump International Hotel.
Three million people around the world in more than six hundred different protests marched against our new President today, on his first day in office. He responded predictably, angrily insisting that his Inauguration outdrew the protests. I was in the thick of both events, and this is a bald-faced, naked lie. The Women's March drew at least five times the crowd that showed up for the Inauguration. Today's protests were about millions of people serving notice to Donald Trump that they are acutely aware of his lies, his racism, his misogyny, his fascistic self-image, and, most off, his colossal smallness (if there is such a juxtaposition). It was a privilege to be there. It was thrilling to the bone. Everyone who marched today left with the understanding that this was the start of the resistance.
