Trump’s welcome committee: An avalanche of opponents
Protests are planned across the USA and around the world
From the grave of a suffragist in Upstate New York to the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., and the Brandenburg Gate in Germany, President-elect Donald Trump has quite a welcome committee: An estimated 1 million people plan to demonstrate in all 50 states and 32 countries.
In the U.S. capital alone, the National Park Service has issued permits for 25 separate events the weekend of his swearing-in Friday as the nation’s 45th president. It’s a number that’s “pretty well unprecedented” relative to past inaugurations, says Mike Litterst, a park service spokesman. “The biggest issue is merely finding space for all of these groups.”
The main event is the Women’s March on Washington on Saturday, which is expected to draw at least 200,000 people to rally in support of women’s rights, including abortion rights as well as affordable health care and equal pay. It has inspired about 300 others of varying sizes across the country and on every continent, saysYordanos Eyoel, spokeswoman for a network of sister marches.
While there are a few groups — like Bikers for Trump — coming to show their support, the vast majority are protesters, according to a Park Service spreadsheet of permit applications. What’s unique is that “people who have never been politically active before are now mobilizing,” says Eyoel, a Bostonbased organizer from Ethiopia who became a U.S. citizen last fall.
Cities with the largest number of registrants include Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Boston, Denver and Minneapolis. There are marches even in smaller and non-coastal cities such as Topeka, Nashville and Des Moines. “The message here is women’s rights are human rights, and we are not taking a single step back,” says Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women.
Others are more openly hostile to the incoming president.
“We’re more than disappointed in Trump. We’re dis-
The numbers expected in the nation’s capital are “pretty well unprecedented.” Mike Litterst, National Park Service
gusted,” says Working Families Party senior adviser Valerie Ervin. “Not just today but for years to come we will march.”
The hundreds of thousands descending on Washington belie their challenge in presenting a unified front: Trump was elected with plenty of support from women. “There are women who have always fought against and will continue to fight against systemic and patriarchal structures. This march, though, is taking place in a different context,” says Brandy Faulkner, a politics expert at Virginia Tech. “We have a president-elect who is on tape bragging about a sexual assault. Yet, roughly 54% of white women who voted supported him.”
Even so, O’Neill hopes Trump will take notice of their passion since “a lot more people may be coming to our march than are coming to his inauguration,” she says. According to the D.C. Department of Transportation, as of Friday 393 charter buses were registered for parking on the day of Trump’s inauguration, compared with 1,200 registered the day of the women’s march.
The diverse groups participating — from Amnesty International to Planned Parenthood — see the marches as an orientation of sorts for a longer-term resistance. Filmmaker Michael Moore has called for “100 days of resistance” to Trump’s presidency that starts with the women’s march. The big test will be “whether the groups will pursue a collective policy agenda after the marching is done,” Faulkner says.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson says 99 protest groups are expected for the inauguration, including 63 that are expected to rally on Friday.
Organizers hope participants will inspire women to get more involved in their communities, and O’Neill says civil rights and women’s rights groups already have begun closer coordination after Trump’s victory Nov. 8.
A lot depends on people like Esther Lofgren, 31, an Olympic gold medalist in rowing who hasn’t been an activist but now wants to help advance women’s issues. “It seems like a very important time to speak up,” she says. “As an athlete, I know how important my body and what I choose to do with it is.” She’ll march with her teammates as part of a group called Athlete Ally.
Whenever there are large protests, there’s potential for clashes. That’s more likely to happen on Inauguration Day than it is during the women’s march. “There’s a lot of baby strollers at women’s marches. It’s not a raucous march,” O’Neill says.
During the inauguration, a group called #DisruptJ20 vows a “festival of resistance” to include rallies at all 12 Secret Service checkpoints and “colorful disruptions” along the Inaugural Parade route to promote “racial justice, immigrant rights, LGBTQ, antiwar, climate” and other concerns. The group spent the weekend in a series of training sessions and workshops. It also might try to disrupt inaugural balls attended by Trump supporters, including the “Deploraball.”
The main pro-Trump group organizing around the inauguration is Bikers for Trump, a motorcycle group led by a South Carolina chainsaw artist who gained fame when he mowed the lawn around the Lincoln Memorial during the 2013 government shutdown. On Thursday, the group posted on Twitter that Trump is “instructing his staff to give us the resources to put on the best rally possible.” Still, on Friday its founder, Chris Cox, told Fox Business Network that “the bikers are certainly used to being outnumbered, and we are prepared to form a wall of meat.”
So many groups are planning to gather on the streets of Washington that the Millennial website Mic has created a real-time map called “Storm the Swamp” to help keep track of the planned chaos. Others include an estimated 500 who will hold a peaceful candlelight vigil commemorating women who stood vigil in front of the White House from 1913 to 1917 to advocate for suffrage, during which the Seneca Falls Declaration will be read.
Finally, a pro-marijuana legalization group plans to hand out a few thousand free joints to raise awareness about the benefits of marijuana legalization. “At 4 minutes and 20 seconds into President Trump’s speech we’ll light up! (unless President Trump comes out now in support of full cannabis legalization in all 50 states and DC!)” DCMJ says on its homepage.