‘Women united’
Thousands brave cold, snow as they converge on Plaza in second annual Women’s March
Ayear and a day after the inauguration of Donald Trump, thousands of people converged on the Santa Fe Plaza on Sunday for the second annual Women’s March, a local demonstration of support in what has become one of the largest single-day political protests for human rights in American history.
Despite biting temperatures — it was under 30 degrees throughout — and occasional snow, traffic police and march organizers estimated between 4,000 and 5,000 people made the five-block trek, the road slick with slush below marchers’ feet.
While a formal count was not done, crowd numbers were significantly smaller than last year, when more than 15,000 people paraded through Santa Fe’s downtown. But marchers Sunday were an enlivened group — many carrying sardonic, colorful signs, bobbing paper mâché puppets and holding children aloft, some wearing knitted pink protest hats.
Sunday was 16-year-old Ada Schrader’s first time attending the Women’s March.
“Since I am growing up and learning about the world, it’s been kind of a crazy time to do that as a girl,” she said. “The last year has been kind of like eye-opening to see. You know, for a while, I thought we were all treated the same.”
Schrader walked alongside two friends from elementary school. She said she came to the march “just to see everybody supOn
porting women and, you know, saying that what’s happening is not normal.”
“It is very empowering to see like boys and girls and all people alike coming out to support something that we really need to get more eyes on in public,” said Schrader’s friend, Faye Henegan, 15.
It was an event for all ages. Judy Bell, 77, “and going strong,” marched alongside friends while holding onto the leash of a strong white Labrador that pulled her quickly through the crowd.
“I lived through the ’50s and ’60s and I know what male dominance is all about,” Bell said. “We are women strong, women united.”
Myles Nordstrum, 11, who watched the march with his fathers last year in San Francisco, said this year he was marching for “equal rights.”
Around the globe, women’s marches kicked off Saturday, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets in support of the rights of women, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, as well as access to health care, abortion and other issues that many feel are under threat, especially since the Trump administration took office.
Santa Fe’s march was aligned with the flagship Power to the Polls march in Las Vegas, Nev., a national voter registration event and the second act to the Women’s March on Washington in January 2017, which drew more than an estimated 500,000 people to Washington, D.C., and between 3 million and 5 million marchers across the nation.
Lindsay Conover, one of the organizers of the march in 2017 and the first of more than a dozen speakers Sunday, said “despite how it might look, a lot of progress [has] been made in the last year.”
She listed the accomplishment of Danica Roem, who defeated a Republican to become the first transgender person elected to the legislature in Virginia; the election of 32-year-old Ashley Bennett to the Atlantic County Board of Chosen Freeholders in New Jersey, taking the seat of a Republican John Carman, who disparaged last year’s march; and 390 women, she said, are currently planning to run for the U.S. House of Representatives, the largest number of female hopefuls to date. Forty-nine women are expected to run for the Senate.
The march concluded at the Plaza, where speakers stressed the need for each person to create further change by voting.
The crowd whooped and cheered accompanied by the applause of beating of drums.
The spirit of the march gained new momentum this year with the rise of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, which have allied communities to stand up and speak out in the face of sexual harassment and assault. Many protesters’ signs referenced the president’s own verbal attacks against woman and references to his remarks about using his celebrity as a vehicle for assault.
“Let’s grab them by the midterms,” signs proclaimed.
Dozens of Native women affiliated with Tewa Women United and 3 Sisters Collective spoke about the abuses, killings and disappearances that have faced the indigenous community. Signs drawn in red paint, read: “Stop raping indigenous women.”
The issues of the crowd ran the gamut — reproductive rights; the struggles of DACA Dreamers facing deportation; the increasing tenor of racism in the nation; corruption; fear of nuclear war.
“I have circus music playing in my ears constantly,” said Shar Jimenez, an aesthetician in Santa Fe raising a 13-year-old girl. “And it’s reached the point where I am just not even sure if I believe what is happening or not.”
Cindy Little, 56, who works at Los Alamos National Laboratory and whose sign displayed a nuclear explosion, said she marched because “Congress is not stopping him [Trump] and we have to do what we can plus we need the moral support.”
“It’s a lot to wait for the midterms, it’s a lot to wait for the election,” said her marching companion, Karen Cruise. “So it’s nice to have some action we can take in the meantime that’s positive.”
Cruise, who is in her 50s, said she felt more like 28.
Many in the crowd said the fear they felt while marching last year has been transformed into action.
As the event wound down and people began to depart for warmer places, march organizers asked the crowd to wait for the grand finale. The sound system began to blare with music and a group of dancers took to the stage.
Yo Vivire (“I Will Survive,” in English) played as the dancers outstretched their arms in unison. The crowd began to dance too, hand in hand, protest signs bobbing up and down to the beat of the music. The snow swirled like confetti.
Contact Rebecca Moss at 505-986-3011 or rmoss@ sfnewmexican.com.