Celebrities join march for women’s rights
LOS ANGELES: Demonstrators from Los Angeles to New York marched in support of female empowerment and women’s rights on the anniversary of Donald Trump’s inauguration on Saturday.
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 at a women’s march.
Longoria, who starred in TV’s “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 is 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.
People marched in Casper, Wyoming, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Houston. More marches were planned in cities on Sunday.
In Park City, Utah, where the annual Sundance Film Festival is in full swing, 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 halfdressed to a nearby fraternity house, where students called police.