Saturday, January 21st was the day that the Women’s March on Washington took place in not only Washington D.C., but across the world. Millions of allies came out to fight for safe and legal abortion, equal pay, LGBTQ+ rights, climate change, black lives matter, latina lives, sex worker rights, and rights for anyone who felt that their voice wasn’t being heard. People were calling the protest “intersectional feminism”, meaning that it was representing or intersecting social identities and similar systems of domination, discrimination, or oppression. The march stood for a lot more than what its title stated, and you could definitely tell by the influx of people who turned out for the event that it was more than just a march.
I had left the place of residence that I spent the night at with two of my sorority sisters at approximately 9 A.M. in order to get to the march around 10 A.M. When we had approached the subway station we realized that the it was going to be a lot harder to try to squeeze onto the metro then expected. My party and I watched a whole train completely packed ride right by us heading south towards Lafayette Plaza. People were traveling in groups all decked out in pink hats and signs.
By the time I had finally arrived via subway it was just about 10 A.M. Leaving the subway was a struggle in its own since almost every last person in the metro carts were all heading to the same place. But as we exited we didn’t have to tap our metro cards to leave because the station had decided that they were just going to let people ride for free because of the influx of riders and the reason for the influx.
As I stepped off the escalator and onto the street I was overcome by the amount of people everywhere. We weren't even at the national mall and there were miles of people walking the streets holding their signs. As I made my way to the rally with my friends we passed a counter protest that was taking place on the side of the road, mainly promoting anti-abortion laws. The counter protest was only about 7-10 people strong, so as you can imagine they were no threat to the thousands of people that were passing them by the minute.
Into the rally at the national mall was intense. We had made our way to an area on Jefferson Street, but then quickly found ourselves far from any escape of the crowd. It was tight and trying to find our friends from our college became a forgotten idea when after 30 minutes of weaving in and out of people to try to get to a building was near impossible. People were literally EVERYWHERE. We stood in the same general vicinity for close to 4 hours praying that the march would start. From our location we could barely see the screen of people who were speaking and there wasn’t a speaker in sight. So for the most part the marchers in my area were very anxious to get moving. But little did we know that there was nowhere to march due to the fact that the entire route was filled with marchers already.
About 45 minutes after the march was scheduled to commence people started moving. I found myself marching on grass and then no street, and then on side streets. The route of the march had changed from a straight path to anywhere anyone could find a space to walk over. People were chanting and waving their signs overhead as they marched forward. We had to stop marching around 3 because our bus location had been switched from D.C. to Virginia, and our time had been changed from 5P.M. to 4:30P.M.
Nonetheless, the march itself was the most empowering event I have ever been a part of in my short 20 years of life. I was moved by the amount of people that came out to work together as a unit in protecting our civil rights. This march was so much more than just a bunch of people who dislike Trump. It was about coming together as a nation by people all over the world to tell our U.S. government that we will not be silently watching our country digress back to the 1960’s. It was powerful, and I could never thank all the people that inspired me at the march to become vocal with my political and ethical opinions.
