In a striking sign of solidarity Saturday, more than 2 million people joined Women’s Marches from the nation’s capital to the Bay Area and beyond, promising to fight for a new era of civil rights in the age of President Donald Trump.
Aerial images of buoyant, peaceful protesters clogging plazas and streets from cities as far flung as Sydney and Tokyo to San Jose, Oakland, San Francisco and Walnut Creek harkened to 1960s-era protests against the Vietnam War, bringing some nostalgic baby boomers to tears.
About 100,000 marched in Oakland, extending 40 city blocks. In Washington, D.C., a half-million people were so tightly packed on the National Mall that organizers were forced to alter the marching route.
“It’s going to get harder before it gets easier,” California’s newly elected U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris told the crowd in Washington. But, she said, “there is nothing more powerful than a group of determined sisters marching — standing up for what is right.”
In all four Bay Area cities with big marches, massive crowds spilled over from gathering places even before protesters began to march. About 50,000 gathered in San Francisco, where City Hall was lit up pink in the pouring rain for the evening rally and march. More than 25,000 marched from San Jose City Hall to Plaza de Cesar Chavez, and as many as 10,000 crowded the downtown streets of Walnut Creek, a suburb known more for its boutiques and restaurants than protests. Thousands more marched in Santa Cruz and Watsonville.
Many protesters wore pink “pussy hats” with cat ears — borrowing a crass term that’s now nearly normalized after a 2005 tape was released weeks before Trump’s election in which he boasted about grabbing women’s genitals. The hats, many handmade and knitted, became an unofficial symbol of the Women’s March.
In Washington, where feminist icon Gloria Steinem and such celebrities as Madonna and Ashley Judd revved up crowd, many chanted, “We want a leader, not a creepy tweeter.”
What started as a post-election idea for a women’s march on Washington to protest Trump burgeoned into a global event, with 673 marches in 50 states and 32 countries. While women’s rights were the centerpiece of the protests, the Women’s March theme expanded to include environmental protection, gun control, immigrant and LGBT rights, as well as Black Lives Matter and support for Planned Parenthood.
The event also drew people from various political backgrounds, including Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and a former Republican candidate for California governor, who was spotted with her husband, Dr. Griffith Harsh, at the San Jose rally.
Many men joined the marches, including Robert Sanchez, 77, a retired teacher from San Jose who carried a sign that read “Men of Quality Don’t Fear Equality.”
In a surreal and passionate mix of ideas in San Francisco, a long-planned Walk for Life by pro-life activists marching in the morning mingled with the Women’s March protesters later in the day. The conflict between both sides had already been established at the national level when Women’s March organizers in Washington rejected an attempt by a right-to-life group to partner with the march. But little tension was on display in San Francisco.
“The Women’s March is not welcoming to the pro-life movement,” said Walk For Life West Coast co-chair Eva Muntean. “But a lot of the women that we know here would like to do both because they support both causes.”
UC Merced political science student Berenice Ballinas, 20, was one of them attending the Walk For Life event.
“I believe in both messages,” Ballinas said in San Francisco. “I’m very strongly pro-life, but I definitely believe that at the end of the day it’s a woman’s body and she should have the right to choose.”
White House officials did not comment on the march on Saturday. After a White House briefing in which he accused the media of lowballing the estimated crowds at Friday’s inauguration, Press Secretary Sean Spicer ignored a reporter’s question about the march.
Many Bay Area residents traveled to Washington to celebrate what they consider a reawakening of an activist movement after Hillary Clinton’s unexpected defeat in November.
“I decided to come because I was angry. I was angry at the rhetoric I heard about women. I was angry at the rhetoric I heard about a lot of vulnerable people, such as Muslims, immigrants and gay people,” said Brie Linkenhoker, a neuroscientist and director of Stanford’s Worldview Initiative.
Thirty-five women from Palo Alto’s St. Mark’s Episcopal Church flew across the country to carry a banner proclaiming “The American Majority Rejects Hate.”
“The reason we are here is we are all sisters of faith — and we will work together because it is always better to work together when you are trying to get something done,” said parishioner Joannie Bigwood Osborne, a Palo Alto resident.
In San Jose, a city not often known for its activism, the route along Fourth Street was so packed it took some marchers two hours to move a half a mile. It was the second-largest demonstration in the city’s history, next to a 2006 immigrant rights march attended by 100,000 people.
“San Jose has awoken,” Mayor Sam Liccardo said.
Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez urged the protesters gathered on the rain-soaked grass and mud of the plaza named after civil rights leader Cesar Chavez to remember this day.
“Promise yourself you will remember where you were when you changed history,” Chavez said. “I want you to remember the moment you said, ‘I will be a guardian to freedom. I will be a warrior for a new civil rights movement in this country.”
The marchers attracted both seasoned protesters like 73-year-old Amanda Hawes, of San Jose, who marched for civil rights in Mississippi in the summer of 1964, to political neophytes like Cecilia Denny, 57, of Mountain View.
“I’ve never protested,” Denny said. “I’m appalled that after the first African-American president, we’ve taken a huge step backward. It’s appalling as an African-American woman that we’re still having the same conversations we had in the ’50s and ’60s.”
In Walnut Creek, the crowd was so stunningly large that police closed main streets through the downtown — a regional draw on weekends for shopping and dining — bringing traffic chaos to surrounding streets.
Many came to protest what they fear will be devastating impacts by the Trump administration on their daily lives.
“I came here to fight for education and my mom’s health and Obamacare,” said Alea Kouhi, a fourth-grader from Pleasant Hill who came with her mother, Jackie Kouhi, and a group of about 20 other moms and kids.
U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Walnut Creek, who was among the 70 or so members of Congress who boycotted Trump’s inauguration on Friday, told the crowd, “I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
Added the congressman: “In a strange way, Trump is uniting the country.”
For the downtown Oakland march, BART added six extra trains to accommodate the throngs of people.
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“There are people here in wheelchairs and with walkers,” said Donna Longley, 51, who marched in the Oakland rally with her 15-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Diaz. “If they can be here, anyone can do it. The best part was seeing the little girls with signs saying ‘Women’s Power.’”
Bill Galarneau said he participated in the Occupy Oakland protest in 2011, but “this is bigger and better. It’s so great to see people young and old here. We’re going to have to stick together.”
Nicole Owens, who traveled nearly 200 miles from Clovis in the Central Valley to attend the Oakland protest with her 7-year-old daughter, reflected on what many hope will be an enduring movement. Her eyes filled with tears as she explained that she has two daughters and doesn’t want women’s rights to be stripped away.
“Am I optimistic Trump is going to listen?” Owens said. “No. But a sleeping giant has been awakened with his election.”
Staff writers Levi Sumagaysay , Ethan Baron and Lisa Wrenn contributed to this report.
