On Saturday, January 20, 2018, the one year anniversary of the 2017 Women’s March, the Women’s March once again held the nation’s attention. Hundreds of thousands of people in cities across the country joined together to protest a range of issues, from President Trump to women’s rights.
The poster march, “Power to the Polls” was held in Las Vegas, Nevada, a swing state for the semi-distant 2020 presidential election. While many protesters had their own reasons for attending, the focus of the marches this year was voter registration, highlighting the shift of the organizers to political action.
Other prominent marches were held in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco. In Los Angeles, according to Vanity Fair, an estimated 500,000 people attended the march. In New York City, Mayor Bill De Blasio put the number of marchers at 200,000, half the number who marched last year, but in Chicago there was an estimated 300,000 marching, an increase from 2017.
This year in San Francisco, an estimated 55,000 people rallied at City Hall. From about 11:30 in the morning, until around 2:00 in the afternoon, City Hall and Civic Center Plaza filled with more and more protesters. Then, around 2:00 p.m. the rally turned into a march and headed down Market Street to reach Embarcadero Street. By the time the marchers reached Market Street their numbers had risen to about 60,000.
photo by Nick Harris
At City Hall the rally was addressed by speakers such as Brittany Packnett, who served on President Obama’s 21st Century Policing Task Force and Hillary Ronen, a member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors for the 9th District. London Breed was seen in the front of the procession as the marchers headed for the Embarcadero. The crowd represented an energetic mix of politics and activism.
According to Sophia Andary, a co-leader of the San Francisco march, the official estimate of 60,000 people at this year’s protest was down from 2017’s count of 100,000.
Debbie Miller, a writer, who did not attend last year’s march but traveled from Alaska to attend this year’s, explained why she was on the move for women’s rights. She has “complete disapproval of our current president.” She added, “Trump lacks the integrity and the character that we need in the White House, and he lies.”
