Hundreds of thousands of people streamed into the nation’s capital Saturday to attend a massive march in support of women’s rights and civil rights, the largest of dozens of marches in the United States and around the world that signaled the rocky road ahead for President Donald Trump a day after his inauguration.
Washington’s public transportation system nearly ground to a halt as heavy crowds massed toward the Women’s March on Washington on the National Mall, easily dwarfing the numbers that had gathered for Trump’s swearing-in on Friday.
Tens of thousands joined marches and rallies in Boston, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Denver and dozens of other U.S. cities, and women’s rallies also unfolded in global capitals like London, Paris, Sydney, Ottawa and Nairobi. Estimates of the worldwide turnout topped 2.5 million people.
“I was just talking to people from our many sister marches, including the one in Berlin, and they asked me to send a special message: ‘We in Berlin know that walls don’t work,’ ” said the event’s honorary co-chair, Gloria Steinem, a feminist icon.
Before her were a sea of people, many wearing pink knit caps, the symbol of the march. Thousands waved signs and placards, some bearing angry messages, others in a more humorous vein. “Where do I even start?” said one sign.
“It’s an extraordinary day,” said Sen. Kamala Harris, a newly installed Democrat from California. “We are at an inflection point in the history of our country.”
The marches underscored the deep divisions that cleave the country, and brought to the fore groups that repudiate Trump, both domestically and globally, and his vision of the country, which some see as exclusionary. If nothing else, the marches signaled a combative mood among those opposed to Trump. Protest issues ranged far beyond women’s rights to include Trump’s relations with Russia, government surveillance, concern about billionaire leaders and migrant rights.
So many people massed on the National Mall, crowding a planned march route to an area near the White House, that the march was simply replaced with a stationary rally.
One of the first speakers, actress and activist America Ferrera, echoed some of the anger that many of the protesters said they felt at the dawn of the Trump presidency.
“The president is not America. His Cabinet is not America. Congress is not America. We are America, and we are here to stay,” Ferrera said.
Trump attended an interfaith prayer service Saturday at Washington National Cathedral that drew a number of dignitaries from his newly installed administration. That took him far from the National Mall as it filled with protesters.
Neither Trump nor Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the service, an inaugural tradition dating to the nation’s first president, and none of the dozen faith leaders who led the gathering mentioned the thousands of protesters marching across the city.
Along the protest route, protesters hung from scaffolding, climbed up lampposts for better views, and took selfies in front of landmarks. Whoops and chants rose sporadically from the crowds.
“It’s frigging amazing,” marveled Sarah Lankford, 17, of Chandler, Arizona, caught in a sea of marchers approaching the National Mall. “I’m in my element!”
Lankford was in town with a school group for the inaugural weekend and said she was delighted that the crowd appeared larger than that for the inauguration.
“The police told me it was already bigger than yesterday, three hours ago,” she said.
“This is history in the making and I just love it,” she said. “It’s not divisive like the election, it’s beautiful.”
Crowds were so large at some regional Metro subway system stations that authorities stopped charging riders and opened turnstiles as a public safety measure. Remote parking lots in Washington’s Virginia and Maryland suburbs filled to capacity early in the day.
Crowds were reported at rail stations as far away as Baltimore, and Maryland’s commuter train system, MARC, announced via Twitter that it had added five times its usual capacity to accommodate what it called “unprecedented crowds.”
The DC Metro system announced that as of 11 a.m., 275,000 had ridden the subway, 82,000 more riders than at the same hour on the day of Trump’s inauguration. Twitter users shared photos and video of one Metro station in Rockville, Maryland, where a large crowd waited to enter the packed station and board the train to downtown D.C.
The largest march this century in Washington occurred on April 25, 2004, with the March for Women’s Rights, which is believed to have drawn at least 800,000 people.