Women's March anti-Trump rallies take over streets across US, world

Millions of women gathered in Washington and in cities around the country and the world Saturday to mount a roaring rejoinder to the inauguration of President Donald Trump. What started as a Facebook post by a Hawaii retiree became an unprecedented international rebuke of a new president that packed cities large and small - from London to Los Angeles, Paris to Park City, Utah, and Miami to Melbourne, Australia.

The Washington organizers, who originally sought a permit for a gathering of 200,000, said Saturday that as many as a half million people participated.

Many in the nation’s capital and other cities said they were inspired to join because of Trump’s divisive campaign and his disparagement of women, minorities and immigrants. In signs and shouts, they mocked what they characterized as Trump’s lewd language and sexist demeanor.

The marches provided a balm for those eager to immerse themselves in a like-minded sea of citizens who shared their anxiety and disappointment after Democrat Hillary Clinton’s historic bid for the presidency ended in defeat.

“We just want to make sure that we’re heard,” said Mona Osuchukwu, 27, a District of Columbia native at the Washington march with her 3-year-old daughter, Chioma. “I want her to know that she has a voice. No matter what anyone tells her, especially as a black woman in America.”

The Washington demonstration was amplified by gatherings around the world, with march organizers listing more than 670 planned events nationwide and another 70 cities overseas, including Tel Aviv, Barcelona, Mexico City, Berlin and Yellowknife in Canada’s Northwest Territories, where the temperature was six below zero.

In Chicago, the demonstration was overwhelmed by its own size, after 150,000 demonstrators swamped downtown blocks. It forced officials to curtail their planned march, although thousand of protesters still paraded around the Loop. In Boston, police estimated a gathering of 125,000. In Los Angeles, officials temporarily closed some side streets to accommodate the crowds.

“We are doing our best to facilitate because they are squeezing into every street right now,” said Capt. Andrew Nieman of the Los Angeles Police Department.

There were huge gatherings in New York, Miami, Denver and Seattle.

In Juneau, Alaska, one man marveled that the crowd was the biggest he had ever seen on the state Capitol’s steps. In Philadelphia, marchers filled city bridges. In Lexington, Kentucky, they shut down streets. In New Orleans, they played brass instruments.

The fear - and anger - at Trump’s rise to the most powerful position in the United States reverberated at renowned protest sites around the globe, from the Trocadero in Paris to Trafalgar Square in London.

Marina Knight, a 43-year-old executive assistant, and her 9-year-old daughter were two of the tens of thousands marching in London.

“This is her first march,” Knight said, referring to her daughter. “It’s the first time we felt it was vital to march. I feel the rights we take for granted could go backwards, and we owe it to our daughters and the next generation to fix this somehow.”

In the United States, the crowds marched in weather ranging from balmy to snowy. But common to every gathering was fiery rhetoric, pink knit hats and repeated references to the boast that offended so many women: Trump’s infamous taped comments about groping female genitals.

Among the thousands of signs marchers dumped at the end of the day in front of the Trump International Hotel, just blocks from his new home at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.: “P---y? Power” and “This P---y Bites Back.” Protesters got as close as they could to the presidential mansion, crowding metal barriers less than a block away, with police and Secret Service personnel watching closely.

Demonstrators came to Washington from around the country, sometimes sleeping on the couches of people they had never met before. As of 4 p.m. Saturday, Metro had recorded more than 597,000 trips, a weekend ridership record. By comparison, as of 4 p.m. on Inauguration Day, there were 368,000 trips. The city issued about 1,800 bus parking permits for the event.

D.C. police said they had made no march-related arrests, compared to more than 200 Friday when protesters created chaos in downtown Washington.

Judith Snyder-Wagner, a 67-year-old former fundraising consultant came because she sensed a shift in the rural, blue-collar community near Canton, Ohio, where she lives with her wife, Joy. A neighbor mowed a piece of grass along their property line and put up a Trump sign facing their home. Someone recently drove through the neighborhood flying a Confederate flag.

“We’ve been afraid,” she said, her voice quavering. She was limping up the sidewalk on Independence Avenue. She has had both her knee and hip replaced, and she held a cane in one hand and a poster in the other.