Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony drew a meager turnout on Friday afternoon, and a significant portion of the attendees were there in protest. Saturday’s Women’s March on Washington is expected to bring out a crowd nearly five times larger.
In December, city officials were planning for more than 1 million inauguration attendees and more than 1,500 charter buses. Earlier this week, they amended their estimation—only 435 buses were slated to park in the lots near RFK Stadium and elsewhere in the city on Inauguration Day. And at least 12 of those were full of people coming to protest, according to DCist.
The Women’s March, on the other hand, has 2,066 buses slated to park in the city on Saturday. Barack Obama’s record-setting 2009 inauguration drew about 3,000 charter buses, and officials estimated the resulting crowd at 1.8 million people.
Saturday’s march, which has been in the works since the day after Trump’s Nov. 8 election, isn’t explicitly anti-Trump—in fact, organizers have been fielding criticism from some attendees who are upset that Hillary Clinton isn’t on the march’s official list of honorees. But its platform is extremely progressive, reaching beyond the usual-suspect issues in the “women’s” category (reproductive rights, equal pay, sex discrimination) to take strong stances on immigration, police brutality, and workers’ rights.
At the inauguration ceremony and its concurrent protests on Friday, the homemade pink “pussyhats” that have come to be an unofficial uniform for the march were everywhere. They were a handy code by which to separate the Trump fans on the street from the anti-Trumpers, much more effective than those “Make America Rage Again” or “Make America Mexico Again” hats that look just like regular MAGA gear from afar.
That won’t likely be a problem on Saturday, when what may turn out to be hundreds of thousands of people come out to see Angela Davis, Gloria Steinem, Janelle Monae, Janet Mock, Cecile Richards, the Indigo Girls, and the other people slated to speak and perform at the pre-march rally. The program starts at 10 a.m. at the intersection of 3rd Street and Independence Avenue SW, and the marching (west on Independence, north on 14th, west on Constitution, and ending at 17th Street) begins at 1:15 p.m. Expect a lot of good signs and a sea of pink cat ears.
The D.C. event is just one of more than 670 (!) women’s marches happening around the world on Saturday. As of Thursday, the Los Angeles march had 92,000 registrants, and Boston is estimating a turnout of more than 80,000. More than 43,000 people have indicated on Facebook that they’re going to the San Francisco march. Miami expects up to 10,000 people at its march, and St. Paul, Minnesota is showing up strong with current estimates of 20,000 attendees at its Saturday event.
