U.S. marches for women’s rights slam Trump, encourage voting
LOS ANGELES— Demonstrators from Los Angeles to New York marched in support of female empowerment and denounced Donald Trump’s views on immigration, abortion, LGBT rights and women’s rights on Saturday, the anniversary of his inauguration.
People marched in Casper, Wyoming, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Houston, and in many cities across Canada, including Toronto, Vancouver, Halifax and Montreal. In Park City, Utah, where the Sundance Film Festival is on, actress Jane Fonda and nationally known attorney Gloria Allred joined the women’s march.
In Morristown, New Jersey, that state’s new first lady told a crowd she was a victim of sexual violence while attending college.
Tammy Murphy, the wife of Democrat Phil Murphy, said the attack occurred while she was a sophomore at the University of Virginia. She said she was walking along a path when a man grabbed her and pulled her into some bushes. She said the man tried to take her clothes off and put a crab apple in her mouth to silence her but she bit his hand and fled half-dressed to a nearby fraternity house, where students called police.
In Los Angeles, Eva Longoria, Natalie Portman, Viola Davis, Alfre Woodard, Scarlett Johansson, Constance Wu, Adam Scott and Rob Reiner were among the celebrities who addressed a crowd of hundreds of thousands of demonstrators.
Longoria, who starred in “Desperate Housewives,” told marchers their presence matters, “especially when those in power seem to have turned their backs on reason and justice.”
Portman, an Academy Award winner, talked about feeling sexualized by the entertainment industry from the time her first film, “Leon: The Professional,” was released when she was 13 and suggested it’s time for “a revolution of desire.” In the 1994 film, Portman played a young girl taken in by a hit man after her family is killed.
Woodard urged everyone to register and vote, saying, “the 2018 midterms start now.” And Davis spoke with the passion of a preacher as she discussed the nation’s history of discrimination and her past as a sexual assault survivor.
The 2017 rally in Washington, D.C., and hundreds of similar marches created solidarity for those opposing Trump’s views, words and actions. Millions of people around the world marched during last year’s rallies, and many on Saturday talked about the news avalanche of politics and gender issues in the past year.
Critics of the weekend’s marches said the demonstrations were really a protest against Trump. More rallies were planned at other cities today.
Meanwhile, Trump on Saturday tweeted that it was a “perfect day” for women to march to celebrate the “economic success and wealth creation” that’s happened during his first year in office.
Hillary Clinton, said the Women’s March last year was “a beacon of hope and defiance.”
“In 2018, it is a testament to the power and resilience of women everywhere,” she tweeted yesterday.