Ladies and gentlemen, the opposition to President Donald Trump is officially here!
Earlier today, millions of people across the United States and on all seven continents around the world (including Antarctica!) participated in Women’s Marches in Washington, D.C. and numerous other locales. The Women’s Marches are the single largest action by the women’s rights movement that I have witnessed in my lifetime by far.
Although I was unable to attend any of the Women’s Marches, here are some observations from the Women’s Marches (all of these are courtesy of either social media of participants or news sources with an online operation of some kind):
- In some cities, there were so many participants, the marchers were literally too numerous to march. The flagship march in Washington, D.C., as well as the march in Chicago, were both turned into rallies due to extremely large crowd sizes.
A Women’s March in Idaho (photo courtesy of Lisa Howard) - In Champaign, Illinois, good attendance was reported for the march there. The Champaign march is the top story on The News-Gazette website; it is extremely rare for a political protest of any kind to get considerable media attention in east-central Illinois.
- The northernmost city in the world that I know of where a march was held was Utqiagvik, Alaska (if you know of a march held in a more northerly city than Utqiagvik, feel free to reply to this blog post with information), and a women’s march was held in Antartica by researchers stationed there.
- In some heavily-conservative U.S. states, very large turnout was reported for marches there. In Mentone, Alabama (population: 360), “about 50” people participated in a women’s march, which is nearly 14% of the heavily-Republican town’s population. The Mentone precinct, which includes a larger area than Mentone’s municipal borders, had 170 people vote for Hillary Clinton in the November 2016 election.
The opposition to Donald Trump is not going to be led by a single person. It’s going to be led by a large segment of the American people.
The Progressive Midwesterner 