Women’s March returns Saturday

Last year’s event drew more than 1,000 people

Protesters will take to the streets in Woodstock and across the nation Saturday for the Second Annual Women’s March.

The Woodstock Women’s March will begin at 11 a.m. at Andy Lee Field on Rock City Road and proceed to the center of town. The event will include speakers, music and a moment of silence and will end back at Andy Lee Field.

This year, the message is “a little more global,” said Annie Reed, one of the organizers.

Reed said the focus of the march will be human rights and environmental issues.

“It’s about trying to wake people up to the fact that things are happening that are not good to our nation or the planet,” she said. “It’s more about humanity, more human rights-oriented. These are human rights, to have clean water to have medical care, to be able to

get married to whomever it is you love.

“We need to figure out how to live peacefully and healthfully on this planet,” Reed said.

The event’s call to action, she said, will be for supporters to become involved in their communities and get out to vote.

The event is expected to feature a number of speakers, including Rachel Marco-Havens, as well as a number of musical performances.

Reed said organizers

have no idea how many to expect for the march. The organizers of last year’s march hoped 100 people would attend, but the turnout wound up being more than 1,000.

“It was huge,” Reed said. “It was way bigger than we ever thought.

“It was a great event, it was really uplifting.”

The Woodstock march and others being held around the country on Saturday coincide with the one-year anniversary of the 2017 Women’s March

which took place the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president. The Washington, D.C., march that day drew between 400,000 and 500,000 people, and it is estimated that between 3 million and 5 million participated in marches nationwide, making it the largest single-day protest in U.S. history.

In addition to the Woodstock Women’s March, marches are planned for Saturday in Albany and New York City.

PROVIDED Toni Del Castillo, right, and her daughter, Ashley Mott, hold up hand-made signs, to be used in Saturday's march in Woodstock, at the Kathy Anderson School for Young Artists in Bearsville.

PROVIDED/FILE The turnout at last year’s Women’s March in Woodstock was substantially larger than organizers expected.