When activist and organizer Raquel Willis spoke at the inaugural Women’s March on the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2017, the organization was very different.
At that time, Willis was a burgeoning leader in social justice and activism, and she says the conversation around trans experiences was limited. “It was a time where there was more visibility than ever before, more trans folks engaged in social justice movement than ever before,” Willis says. “And yet there was a tension between, particularly cis women and trans women, but also women of other experiences too.”
The first Women’s March was enormous, bringing an estimated 500,000 marchers to Washington, DC and over 4 million throughout the United States. At the time, the protest was the largest single-day protest in the country’s history, and it created indelible protest images of women in pink hats that would define a certain type of opposition to Trump’s presidency. But during the following years, the Women’s March fractured. There were multiple arguments among those within the organization, the group faced allegations of racism and antisemitism, and sponsors fled. There were also strategic questions: Willis says she was skeptical about centering Trump as a singular, isolated political event, and instead wishes there was discussion of him as “reflective of these long standing systems of oppression, white supremacy, cis heteropatriarchy, classism, and capitalism.”
Now nearly eight years later, Willis and the Women’s March organizers say the group has evolved, absorbed past criticism, and is dedicated to including more voices as they prepare for Trump’s second term.
To wit, the protest planned for the weekend of Trump’s second inauguration isn’t being called another “Women’s March,” but rather the “People’s March.” The march, scheduled for January 18th, is an attempt to bring all people who are fearful of a second Trump Administration,…
