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A former organizer of the 2017 Women’s March to protest Donald Trump‘s presidency is taking a different stance this year as the People’s March takes off ahead of inauguration day. Eight years back, the United States witnessed the largest single-day protest in history as about 500,000 demonstrators gathered at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to raise their voices against Trump’s election despite losing popular votes. The inaugural march saw people from across the country sporting pink knit “pussyhats” referencing the president-elect’s vulgar bragging about “grabbing women by the pussy” in a 2005 tape.
Although the protest at the time drove the message home on Donald Trump’s first day in office, it in no way hindered the rest of his administration. Eight years later, the politician, who lost the 2020 elections to Biden, reclaimed the victory and is set to assume office in the White House again on Monday, January 20, 2025. Ahead of the start of his tenure, the protesters gathered again, this time christening the Trump protest as the People’s March to encompass more generalized issues and multi-gender efforts. The turn-up this time is merely a fraction of the record 500,000 that showed up in 2017.
The People’s March to Protest Donald Trump’s Presidency Lures Fewer Crowd
While the protest organizers predict about 50,000 people this year, Vanessa Wruble, one of the earliest organizers of the Women’s March hopes the crowd will be even fewer or better still, non-existent. Speaking to The Independent, she admitted that she saw no need for a march this time around. According to her, while she did not wish to discourage anyone from the planned Trump protest, she believed things weren’t quite the same. Going further, Wruble went candid about her thoughts on the protest’s impact, warning,
“I don’t think it will be effective. In 2017, I think that women were devastated that no matter how prepared, experienced, smart, or better they were than a male candidate, that the men were still going to win.”
Explaining further, she referenced the 2016 elections, which seemed like “an anomaly and a mistake,” thereby justifying why many deemed the results devastating. However, this time around, although Trump lost to another qualified woman, Kamala Harris, the results indeed reflected popular votes, making it less of an anomaly. Wruble argued that while some who would have preferred a different candidate rightly had their grievances, another protest against Donald Trump’s inauguration wasn’t exactly the best route. She divulged,
“We can’t keep using the same playbook to try and fight.”
A Different Enemy?
Krista Sug, the brain behind the pink “pussyhats” that defined the 2017 Trump protest also shared Wruble’s perspective, revealing that what’s needed this time around is something unexpected. She believes that unlike eight years ago when Trump seemed like the obvious “enemy,” the enemy being fought against this time “is not as clear-cut.”
Despite the expected low turnout and the reluctance of previous participants to join the protest, the managing director of the Women’s March organization remains optimistic. She likened the first protest to “lightning in a bottle,” while speaking to the outlet, noting that it was “impossible to capture lightning in a bottle twice.” Regardless of the general opinion, the anti-Trump protesters are determined to hold the protest as planned, against Donald Trump and the GOP’s policy priorities two days before his inauguration. The People’s March, spearheaded by civil rights, racial and social justice, and reproductive health organizations, is geared toward policies believed to undermine women’s rights and the LGBTQ community, as well as immigrants and religious minorities.
