Thousands of women wearing pink pussy-hats converged on Washington DC yesterday to protest some of the policies of new US president Donald Trump
WASHINGTON, United States (AP) — Wearing pink, pointy-eared “pussy-hats” to mock the new president, hundreds of thousands of women massed in the nation’s capital and cities around the globe yesterday to send Donald Trump an emphatic message that they won’t let his agenda go unchallenged over the next four years.
“We march today for the moral core of this nation, against which our new president is waging a war,” actress America Ferrera told the Washington crowd. “Our dignity, our character, our rights have all been under attack, and a platform of hate and division assumed power yesterday. But the president is not America. … We are America, and we are here to stay.”
The women brandished signs with messages such as “Women won’t back down” and “Less fear more love” and decried Trump’s stand on such issues as abortion, health care, gay rights, diversity and climate change. Their message reverberated at demonstrations around the world, from New York, Philadelphia and Chicago to Paris, Berlin, London, Prague, Sydney and beyond.
Boston Professor Garland Waller, 66, part of the Washington mobilisation, said she was “devastated” after the election and had to take action. “I don’t know what to do to make a difference anymore, and this feels like a first step,” she said.
Saskia Coenen Snyder, a teacher at the University of South Carolina who came to a rally in Columbia, said: “I’m not sure we could have picked a more irresponsible, misogynistic and dangerous man to be president.”
There were signs that the crowds in Washington could top those that turned out for Trump’s inauguration on Friday. City officials said organisers of the Women’s March on Washington more than doubled their original turnout estimate to 500,000.
More than 600 ‘sister marches’ were planned around the world, and plenty of men were part of the tableau, too. Organisers estimated three million people would march worldwide. In Chicago, organisers cancelled the march portion of their event for safety reasons after an overflow crowd estimated at 150,000 turned out.
Seventy-one-year-old Allan Parachini, who travelled from Hawaii to the Washington march, called it “the most impressive crowd I’ve seen since Woodstock”.
Retired teacher Linda Lastella, 69, who came to Washington from Metuchen, New Jersey, said she had never marched before but felt the need to speak out when “many nations are experiencing this same kind of pullback and hateful, hateful attitudes”.
“It just seemed like we needed to make a very firm stand of where we were,” she said.
As demonstrators rallied alongside the National Mall, Trump opened his first full day as president by attending a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral, a tradition for the day after inauguration. The crowd planned to head his way after hours of speakers and music, with a march toward the grassy Ellipse behind the White House.
On Trump’s way, back to the White House, his motorcade passed several groups of protesters that he would have been hard-pressed to miss.