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When Maya\u2014who asked that her surname not be used for fear of losing her job\u2014learned about The People\u2019s March in Washington, D.C., on the Saturday before Donald Trump\u2019s second inauguration, she knew she had to be there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been a nurse in an OB-GYN practice in Tampa, Florida, for three years and abortion restrictions directly impact my work,\u201d she told The Progressive.<\/em> \u201cI recently had a patient who developed complications. She needed an abortion but we had to turn her away because her fever was \u2018only\u2019 101.2. She literally could have died.\u201d<\/p>\n Other marchers were also motivated by the attacks on reproductive healthcare. But that was just one of the issues that brought them to the nation\u2019s capital.\u00a0<\/p>\n In fact, tens of thousands of people attended one of the three feeder marches in D.C. operating under the umbrella of The People\u2019s March. The three marches, which began at different locales before converging, were loosely organized around themes including defending democracy, ending war, protecting the environment, supporting immigrants, and fighting against policies that stoke racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, and antisemitism. Some of the signs, chants, and speakers also called for D.C. statehood and representation in Congress. Support for feminism was a unifying thread, with The Women\u2019s March centering much of the organizing and outreach for the event.<\/p>\n The huge crowd, which greatly exceeded pre-event estimates of 50,000, marched more than one mile through D.C., culminating in a \u201cPeople\u2019s Fair\u201d near the Lincoln Memorial. There, organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Plan C Pills<\/a>, the Sierra Club, Democratic Socialists of America, Generation Common Good<\/a>, Planned Parenthood, and the FreeHer Institute<\/a> distributed literature and talked to rally-goers about their work.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The mood was upbeat, and the crowd, which was age-diverse but mostly white, carried homemade signs and banners that attested to the connected issues that brought them to the march: Love Not Hate Makes American Great; Education Not Deportation; Stop the 4th Reich; America\u2019s Disgrace: The Sequel; Fuck Trump; Leviticus 19:35-36, When a Foreigner Resides Among You In Your Land, Do Not Mistreat Them; Free Palestine; Feminism Not Militarism; Blessed are the Peacemakers;\u00a0 Socialism Beats Fascism; A Corpse for Organ Donation Should Not Have More Rights than a Living Woman; Protect Trans Kids; Save Mother Earth; Our Diversity is our Strength.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we don’t protest, it will seem as though there is acceptance of Trump\u2019s policies, which will make it easier for him to push them through,\u201d said fourteen-year-old Jackson Fleck, who came to D.C. from Lakewood, Colorado, with his mother, Karlynn Cory, and his sister, seventeen-year-old Wava Fleck. \u201cThe United States can become a police state unless we stop him.\u201d<\/p>\n Ken J. Terry of Sheffield, Massachusetts, agrees that developing a robust, sustained resistance is imperative. \u201cThere has to be a tide of public disapproval,\u201d he said. For Terry, proposed tariffs on imported goods and anticipated deportations of undocumented people are major worries. But his concern extends far beyond Trump\u2019s articulated threats, into something far more menacing: \u201cI don\u2019t want to live in a country that is fascist,\u201d he says.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Likewise, Olivia Stow, a twenty-five-year-old kindergarten teacher from Charlottesville, Virginia, told The Progressive<\/em> that she fears the loss of democracy, and came to the protest for both personal and political reasons. On one hand, she said, she worries about her access to reproductive health care. On the other, she is concerned about her ability to teach if increased restrictions on books and discussion topics in the classroom impede her ability to instruct her low-income, largely immigrant students. \u201cI\u2019m in a Title I school,\u201d she said which receives supplemental federal assistance because a majority of its students come from low-income households. \u201cEverything falls on us, from students\u2019 need for food, to their need for social and emotional support, health care, housing, and safety from gang violence. [Teachers] should have much more help.\u201d But Stow does not anticipate that teachers will get needed assistance if Linda McMahon<\/a>, Trump\u2019s choice to lead the Department of Education, is confirmed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Disinformation was another prevalent concern for protestors. The proliferation of \u201calternative facts\u201d\u2014including rumors about immigrants eating cats and dogs<\/a> and a deep-state conspiracy to microchip vaccine recipients<\/a>\u2014brought Rochester, New York, resident Deni Smith to the protest. \u201cDuring the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic I was working as a physical therapist in an Intensive Care Unit,\u201d Smith said. \u201cI\u2019d leave work each day after seeing people die in front of my eyes, and there would be a picket line in front of the hospital with people screaming that we were Nazis because we wanted everyone to be vaccinated. It was a very dark time.\u201d<\/p>\n Smith has since left that job, but is nonetheless committed to fighting back against media manipulation, which she sees as the distortion of facts to sway public opinion. And while she says that she felt that it was important to be in D.C. on January 18, she understands that most resistance will take place at the local level, with grassroots community groups fighting harmful social policies while simultaneously meeting people\u2019s day-to-day needs for information and care, from access to abortion pills to sanctuary, from requests for clothing and food to legal counsel for those threatened with deportation or eviction. She sees Trump\u2019s ascent as both an opportunity and a danger.<\/p>\n In addition to the People\u2019s March in D.C., more than 350 local actions took place<\/a> on January 18 in cities, suburbs, and rural communities in all fifty states. The marches, speak-outs, and rallies made clear that there will be massive resistance to Trump\u2019s efforts<\/a> to deport our neighbors, cut social welfare programs, privatize public education, reduce taxes for the rich, further erode women\u2019s bodily autonomy, and demolish the separation between church and state.<\/p>\n For Karlynn Cory, the People\u2019s March was a necessary coalescence of like-minded Americans in preparation for Day One of the Trump Administration. \u201cThe fight has just begun,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Maya\u2014who asked that her surname not be used for fear of losing her job\u2014learned about The People\u2019s March in Washington, D.C., on the Saturday before Donald Trump\u2019s second inauguration, she knew she had to be there.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve been a nurse in an OB-GYN practice in Tampa, Florida, for three years and abortion restrictions directly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12022],"tags":[16931,14640,16930,12795,30405,7095,19298,11417,20622,1175,11231],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-51751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activist","tag-activism-dissent","tag-americans","tag-dispatches","tag-donald-trump","tag-eleanor-j-bader","tag-march","tag-peoples","tag-protest","tag-tells","tag-trump","tag-wont"],"yoast_head":"\n