In 2017one day after Donald Trump was sworn in as president of the United States, more than a million people in Washington DC y other cities in the country and around the world responded to a protest called the “Women’s March” and took to the streets, in an unprecedented day of global coordinated opposition to an elected leaderto show their rejection and resistance to the Republican.
This Saturday, two days before Trump is sworn in again, protests have returned to the US capital and other parts of the country, with nearly 350 events called. They did it this time renamed “People’s March”” and with much smaller participation numbersalthough with no less energy among the protesters nor fewer signs of alertness and denunciation. In fact, many feel that This time there is more at stake.
Fatigue and uncertainty
There are different factors that explain the change. In 2016 Trump won the White House by surprise thanks to his victory in the electoral college but having achieved almost three million fewer ballots than his rival then, Hillary Clinton. In the last presidential elections, after losing in 2020 to Joe Biden, the Republican he beat Kamala Harris both in the electoral college as in the popular vote, with 2.3 million more votes than the Democrat.
Fatigue is palpable among progressives in the US after a intense election year that has ended with a disappointing result for them, where a majority has determined the return of a politician who refused to accept the results of 2020 and has faced four criminal cases (and is convicted of one). There is certain pessimism. And among many the uncertainty about how to cope effectively to a presidency that is guaranteed to be much more organized than the first.
Trump comes with the experience won, surrounded by loyalists and no challenges from Republican Party factions that he faced in his first mandate, now practically disappeared in a formation subject to his dominance. It also has the Republican control of both houses of Congress and with the conservative supermajority of the Supreme Courtestablished thanks to her appointment in the first term of judges Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett and which has given her victories ranging from the repeal of the constitutional protection of the right to abortion to the unprecedented expansion of presidential immunity .
Energy
The organizers and participants of this Saturday’s demonstrations, however, have been at pains to emphasize that the movement to confront Trump can be seen more dull but it has not disappeared.
Melody Hamoud, a resident of the capital, who was already at the 2017 protest in Washington, returned to this Saturday with the same pink hat that she wore then and that became one of the icons of those demonstrations. “I didn’t want to “stay at home and eat my head in front of the television,” he told the Associated Press. “I wanted to feel that our movement still has energy and be with others who feel the same.”
Jill Parrish was also in DC, who had bought her ticket a long time ago thinking about attending Harris’ inauguration and brought it forward to be at the demonstration, although she will return to Austin (Texas) before Trump is sworn in. “The most important thing is to demonstrate my fear about the state of our democracy“, the 55-year-old woman told the agency, who wanted to remember that almost half of the voters turned their backs on Trump.
Lillian Fenske, a thirty-year-old woman who had arrived from North Carolina after driving six hours, expressed, as Biden did in his farewell speech to the nation, with her banner: concern about the arrival of an oligarchy., one of the recurring themes in the protest “USA is not for sale” it read. And Lucia Smith, who was also in the 2017 march, had gone from New Jersey. “I wanted to be there for resist and do not comply in advance”, he told the BBC.
Multiple causes
In 2017, the Washington protest, despite its title, served as an umbrella to return the focus to many causes and on this occasion that diversity has been even more highlighted. The demonstration began with congregations in three different parts of the city, with each of them as a meeting point for groups focused on different issues, from palestinian cause to the reproductive rights, of the LGBT community oh go immigrantsthe fight against climate emergency or in favor of racial justice. Then they all came together in a march that ended with an event and speeches in front of the Lincoln memorial.
“We march for different causes but under the same umbrella to show that the resistance is strong and to expose that all the themes are in reality interconnected”, Tabitha St. Bernard-Jacobs, one of the organizers of the Women’s March, explained to NBC.
“Many people do not believe that a demonstration is going to solve the problem and they are right, as such it does not, but that does not mean that resistance is not going to exist,” Dana Fisher, professor of sociology at The Washington Post, reasoned in ‘The Washington Post’. the University of Maryland and author of a book titled “American Resistance: From the Women’s March to the Blue Wave,” the color associated with Democrats and a reference to the victory they achieved in the 2018 legislative elections. “The resistance will rise again, but it will have a very different image.”
For some protesters in Washington, this Saturday was also the last opportunity to take to the streets. without fear that the army would be used to quell their protests. It is a idea that Trump already considered in his first termand even asked his Secretary of Defense Mark Esper if members of the National Guard could shoot demonstrators in the legs in protests over the murder of George Floyd. “With this administration it is not out of the question,” Gary Devaan, who had arrived from Minneapolis, told AP and also overcame his fears that extremist groups like the Proud Boys would respond to this Saturday’s march with violence.
