As the Trump administration found itself marking the one-year anniversary of the president’s inauguration dealing with a government shutdown, the Women’s March also recognized the date with their second march.
Continuing in protest of President Trump — and now in the light of the #MeToo movement — cities nationwide hosted marches, including rallies across Colorado in Broomfield, Durango, and Denver’s downtown.
“My great grandmother was actually a suffragette,” said Laura McGarigle, a first-time marcher. “So, it's kind of sad, four generations removed, here I am still kinda fighting for a similar thing, and so that's why I came. I feel like I know I'm supposed to be here.”
This is Tigist, Netsanet and Mimi, seven years old. They’re at Denver’s Women’s March because they want show support for others. #WomenMarchDenver #womensmarch pic.twitter.com/3yDo23OcCS
David Kim brought 7-year-olds Tigist, Netsanet and Mimi to the march to show them “there's more than just a few voices in this world. It's more than just mom and dad telling them that women are equal that women are important and that their voices are important.”
The 2017 march brought a massive crowd to Civic Center Park, more than 100,000 by some estimates. While the 2018 march may not have matched the sheer mass of the first, the still healthy number of participants did bring the same enthusiasm, conviction and creative protest signs.
Civic Center Park is crowded and marchers are still streaming in. Some of the signs seen at the #WomensMarch2018 pic.twitter.com/c3KY9o4EdG
Both Jahnavi Stenflo and her friend, Maya Shaffer, attended the last march and were glad to see fellow women and supporters come out, even as they felt that it was “smaller than last year.”
“I think at the beginning of last year there was just such a well of emotion and fear, and people didn't know what else to do,” Stenflo said. “So, they came into the streets and I think one year, and people have figured out what they can do.”
Ahead of Saturday’s Women’s March, organizers came to the same conclusion that people had figured out what was possible, and how to act. The next step as they saw it was to push the march into a movement and inspired sustained action.
Among the speakers at Civic Center Park, ahead of the morning’s planned march, were Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne, a candidate for governor in 2018, and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock.
“To be clear today, we are going to keep resisting and we are going to vote,” Mayor Hancock told the crowd, as reported by The Denver Post. The report adds there were cheers when Hancock yelled “ARE YOU READY?”
For Adrian Ortiz, who came to the march with Laura McGarigle and other friends, the biggest issue for him was the very reason that Washington D.C. had ground to a halt earlier Saturday morning: finding a solution for DACA. The program, canceled by a Trump executive order, shielded undocumented individuals brought to the U.S. as young children.
“It's just ridiculous to think that we're going to leave 800,000 students that are among us, people that we know; they're our friends, they're neighbors, they're students and what have we done in the past year? Yeah, it's ridiculous so we need to we need to talk about it, we need to do something.”
Bird's eye view of the crowd at the Denver #WomensMarch2018 #9News pic.twitter.com/1zWzsHRYlJ
CPR’s Michael Sakas, Hart Van Denburg and Jim Hill contributed to this report.
