Pink Versus Red: Women March on an Edgy Washington
Driving through Wisconsin’s rain and fog on Inauguration Day, gripped by a sense of urgency and dread, I traveled with my fifteen-year-old daughter to the Women’s March on Washington, to join her aunt, grandmother, and other women in the family for the massive protest rally. We caught the 7 p.m. Southwest Airlines flight out of Milwaukee, filled with mother-daughter pairs, grandmas, students, a former dance teacher of my daughter’s, and a plethora of other ladies in pink knit hats.
The party atmosphere on the plane was a tonic. “Welcome ladies and gentlemen--or, mostly ladies, I guess,” the Southwest steward announced, to cheers. He snapped pictures for a few of the passengers, and handed over the microphone so someone could organize a flight-specific Facebook group.
We chatted and laughed and walked off the plane, into a group of sour-looking Trump supporters in red “Make America Great Again” hats, waiting for the flight back to Wisconsin after the Inauguration.
Welcome to clearly divided America. It’s pink versus red. Us versus them. The good news is: There seem to be a lot more of us.
Half a million marchers descended on Washington, overwhelming the city, and dwarfing the crowd that gathered in the rain to listen to Donald Trump’s dystopian, self-aggrandizing Inaugural rant.
So huge was the turnout for the Women’s March, the main stage was a tiny dot in a giant sea of protesters. Marchers filled the Ellipse and the entire parade route before the speakers had finished addressing the kick-off rally.
Clinging to lamp-posts, hanging from trees, standing on top of cars, and climbing the walls of the surrounding museums on the mall, the marchers got restless. Most were unable to hear the speakers and after several hours began to chant, “Start the march!” and “Less talking, more walking!”
But walking would be difficult, the organizers announced from the stage, because of the overflowing crowd. “We’ve already accomplished what we came for,” they explained.
Lily and I joined the shoulder-to-shoulder shuffle down Pennsylvania Avenue anyway, all the way to the White House, where protest signs blanketed the security fencing and people squeezed past each other to snap pictures with the famous backdrop.
Among the many people we met: Dora Hinojosa, an immigrant from Mexico, who came from Houston to defend immigrants’ rights; Zakai McDow, a high school student at Walter Johnson High in Washington, D.C., who carried a “Respect Women of Color” sign and said she came “to support women’s rights and protest this hate”; Hillary Keene, a middle-aged white mom from Martha’s Vineyard and her two teen daughters, Ella and Thea, who drove up for their first big protest because, they said, they are worried about the future under Trump; Carly, a young climate scientist from Georgia, who does research on warming in the Arctic; Connie Leak, president of the National Coalition of Labor Union Women, based in Michigan; and Mostafa Hassoun, a Syrian refugee who has been in this country for a year and a half, and told us, urgently, “The Syrian people, we are people are like you—Christians, Muslims, Jews . . . We have a dictatorship right now and we want freedom and democracy. We don’t want Assad.”
Hassoun stood on the side of the parade route and held up a sign: “I am a Syrian refugee. I love America,” and was greeted by cheers from the marchers, who chanted as they passed, “No hate! No fear! Everyone is welcome here!”
There were thousands of clever homemade signs.
Among the handwritten messages: “Dumbledore would never allow this.” “We need a leader, not a creepy tweeter.” “Tiffany, blink twice if you need help.”
There was the familiar chant: “This is what democracy looks like!”
And funnier chants, too: “We’re here, we’re queer, get this Cheeto outta here!” And many, many pussy-grabbing references, including posters of Trump grabbing the Statue of Liberty by the crotch.
Passing the Trump International Hotel, the crowd booed and chanted “Pay your taxes!”
All along the Inaugural parade route, marchers were greeted by cheering sympathizers who packed the stands still set up from the day before.
A handful of pro-Trump protesters were barely visible. On a small sound stage surrounded by port-a-potties outside the Canadian Embassy, Bikers for Trump held a counter-protest and a few people in Trump sweatshirts stood nearby and yelled at the passing crowd. They were so overwhelmingly outnumbered by the throng of marchers they could barely be heard.
On the balcony of the Newseum, a more visible pro-Trump group looked down on the crowd. About twelve people, including a very animated young man waving a red, white, and blue Trump hat, waved to the crowd. The man held up four fingers and jeered. He and his companion, a thin, blond woman with a fur collar, clapped and blew kisses, facetiously urging on the chants.
The sneering and taunting cast a brief pall, especially since the group was standing behind a big Newseum banner welcoming President Trump. But further down the same block, the words of the First Amendment, carved in granite on a giant slab that forms the Newseum’s outside wall, left a more solid, lasting impression than the snarky group on the balcony.
All of institutional Washington seems to be holding its breath, as it goes through the motions of a peaceful transition of power to a President who has expressed contempt for the institutions of democracy. As Michael Moore pointed out in his speech at the protest rally, one betting website is giving only 4-1 odds that Trump will finish his first six months in office without being impeached.
While the largest protest in Washington history was going on, a few miles away, Trump was making news with an appearance at CIA headquarters. He used the occasion to attack the press for accurately reporting on the low turnout at his Inauguration, and to deny his own public statements criticizing the intelligence agency.
He offended CIA staff and officials for posturing, preening, and lying in front of a wall memorializing the CIA dead, while failing to acknowledge them or the significance of the site.
The decorous, aspirational, high-minded Obama Administration has ended with a crash.
We are in uncharted territory. America is on edge. In the streets and in the White House, people are itching for a fight.
Ruth Conniff is Editor-in-Chief of the The Progressive