Ok, I have been buried in photos! I’m so very excited and teary with all your pix and stories. I’m trying to see if other front pagers can handle some of the load. But if not, I’ll just keep posting them over the next several days.
From Randy Khan in DC:
It was a mess. A glorious mess, caused by too many people showing up for the space allotted. So a march that was supposed to be on Independence Avenue spilled over to the Mall, then Constitution Avenue, then Pennsylvania Avenue. Most of us probably didn’t get within a couple hundred feet of the official original route, but I don’t think anybody cared. Local news is saying attendance may have topped 500,000, and Metro ridership was up 8-fold over a normal Saturday, and much more than for Inauguration Day (which, remember, was a work day for some people)
It’s going to be hard for any photos to capture just how many people were there today – but the easiest way to put it is that pretty much the entire Mall area was filled with people.
Kathleen was in Cincinnati and she sent a link to some of the photos, click here.
Lurker David was in Indianapolis:
And finally (though not last for sure!) White Mountain Apache in Tuscon:
For now, I’m posting them in the order they came. There are 50 more emails in my inbox, so more to come.
You all rock so hard! Women Grab Back.
Open thread.
Wag
Denver
Wag
DenverDenver
TaMara (HFG)
OT, we are sitting here just flummoxed by Spicer’s first press conference. Former Bush WH press secretary Ari Fleischer tweeted, “This is called a statement you’re told to make by the President. And you know the President is watching.”
It was painful to listen to his breathless and defensive rant. Just wow
debbie
Ari’s sounding kind of catty.
TaMara (HFG)
@debbie: Ari sounds like he’s had the job before.
ET
In DC the stand used for the inaugural parade had people filling them up when I walked by. Much better use today than yesterday.
Chants:
We won’t go away welcome to your first day
And
We want a leader not an angry tweeter.
zzyzx
You can see mine at my instagram.
The Seattle march was insanely large, much more so than anyone predicted. The sun decided to come out and it was like 54 degrees which was perfect walking weather. It wasn’t Seahawks’ Superbowl Parade crowded downtown, but light rail and moving were so much busier than any game (M’s or Hawks) or Bumbershoot/Folklife.
rikyrah
Kris Olds
@GlobalHigherEd
20+ US politicians seek to prohibit development of geospatial information & analysis re community racial disparities
gene108
I must say the cat-hats are a nice touch. Really stood by out in the big shots of the crowds, where you see a sea of people with the tops of the waves capped in pink.
Way to go knitters!!!!
Schlemazel
The official count in St. Paul, MN was 60,000.My count was higher, 100k but either way. It was bigger than any of the anti-war marches I was part of in the 60s. and the weather sucked. I took pictures but the rain & gray just washed everything out. The march part got truncated because there were too many people & progress was miserably slow; they had not planned for this large a crowd.
As we walked we ran into a Somali woman and her son coming out of an apartment who had no idea what was going on. When we told her she got very excited and thanked us in broken English. It upset her that Trump said men like her son were terrorists and she was very grateful that we were marching against him.
chopper
500,000 my lily-white ass.
Boussinesque
@rikyrah: Not only do they deny evidence, now they’re seeking to disallow the tools used to collect evidence? As a scientist, this horrifies me about as much as the statement about how NASA won’t be allowed to collect earth observations anymore. They’re not just gouging out our eyes and ears with the war on the intelligence communities, they’re lobotomizing the government so we won’t have the data to tell them how badly they’re failing. Reality has a way of sneaking up on you, even if you’ve rendered yourself blind, deaf, and dumb…I just wish it would only sneak up on THESE assholes, instead of making all of us suffer.
chris
@TaMara (HFG): He’s trending second on Twitter after the Women’s March which has over 5,000,000 tweets. Spicer has about 150,000 which you can see here.
The rant was horrendous, the tweets mostly what you’d expect, but the supporters…OMG. Whoever said Idiocracy was a documentary wasn’t kidding. How anyone could watch Spicer’s performance and approve and even cheer is so far beyond me that…I can’t even, as the saying goes.
I fear for you, my American friends.
JerryN
I’ve got a few photos from NYC on my instagram. It was probably as big as the ’04 march the day before the RNC started (800k), and quite peaceable. The NYPD was remarkably mellow, given its past history. In fact, I shook a couple of cops hands on my way out and said thanks.
The crowd was what I expected: mostly white, East Asian, or South Asian but also a fair number of African Americans and Latinx (certainly more diverse than the anti-war protests were). There was a really good age spread, from preschoolers to folks who did their first march 50 years ago.
We had a variant of the chant that ET posted – “We want a leader not a creepy tweeter”. Also plenty of clever signs. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a clear picture of my favorite one – “Free Melania”.
CarolPW
The ex, the dog and I went to the rally in Richland (eastern Washington state – the red part). A good rally there is maybe 100 people, and I was hoping for at least 30. There were an estimated 1,000! Lots of cars passing by honking in support with thumbs up. It was glorious.
tobie
Someone tweeted that the National Guard is estimating 1 million at the march in DC today. Has anyone seen that in the news?
jharp
My wife and I think the first day of the resistance was a smashing success.
Thank you God for the spring weather in the snow belt that allowed so many to get out.
So what’s next? And count me in.
We’re just warming up I figure.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
breaking my several month Tweety fast, he says Michael Moore is calling for primary challenges of Democrats?
bluefoot
@rikyrah: JFC. I was telling a friend a couple of weeks ago that I wanted to try to buy a house before it got too….complicated….in case housing discrimination came back. He said I was being too cynical. Damn it, I’d rather be cynical than right. (Fwiw, he also called me too cynical before the election when I told him not to underestimate the pull of white supremacy.)
Steve!
I took my daughters to the event in Laguna Beach, CA this morning. It looked like around 1,000 people at the peak, and without exception everyone was happy and positive. The crowd was mostly standing along the Pacific Coast Highway, and close to half of the cars driving by were honking their support. It was a very uplifting event. My kids don’t know exactly why they were there (although the 6-year-old, like all kids, does NOT like Trump), but I’m glad I was able to take them to one of these protests.
randy khan
Thanks for posting my photos and comments. The third-to-last photo is one of the bleachers set up for the inaugural parade, being put to much better use. The last photo is Pennsylvania Avenue around 14th Street, across a plaza that was blocked off for the parade. The street is essentially full of people.
BTW, if anybody in D.C. saw a couple of people with the big old-style round NOW signs, that was my wife and me.
satby
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: yeah, he was reading his list of all the ways the Democrats have failed and at number 6 Ashley Judd just verbally coldcocked him. It was great! Watch it here if you haven’t seen it!
Steeplejack (phone)
Dark, dark sign that my brother sent me a picture of from the D.C. rally:
amk
over 600 rallies around the world. dick is the uniter in chief alright.
heckuva job, murkkkkans.
randy khan
@JerryN:
A friend told me recently that the NYPD is not a fan of Trump, and basically thinks he’s mobbed up. That might provide a bit of an explanation.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Moore is now my symbol for unseriousness. Invite him to speak at your own peril.
Beagle
Orange Cheeto’s hotel is across from the Federal Triangle metro stop. The marchers were booing it as they went past.
chopper
@tobie:
I wouldn’t doubt that at all. it was a sea of people all across the mall and up north around the treasury. when you walk up the hill on 14th and turn around and all you see is people all the way down past the Washington monument, and you know it’s still thick all the way back most of the way to the capital, you know 500,000 is a buncha horseshit.
amk
@satby: wtf was this eternal grifter doing there in the first place?
bluehill
@Boussinesque: Orwell’s 1984 supposed to be a cautionary tale not a how-to manual.
debbie
@satby:
I don’t understand why he was there. This wasn’t supposed to be about the Democratic Party.
SenyorDave
@Baud: Moore is now my symbol for unseriousness. Invite him to speak at your own peril.
Its kind of a shame in a way. From what I’ve read, Moore called the election pretty accurately. He believed Trump would win because of the rust belt states. For one reason or another he seems to get that part of the country. But he’s so enamored of himself that everything is about him.
JerryN
@randy khan: Of course he’s mobbed up. It used to be the Sicilians, but these days it’s more likely the Russians. (That’s where the Russian ties come from, after all.) I also suspect that they aren’t happy about the security detail at Trump Tower.
randy khan
@Beagle:
I did feel kind of bad for the security guard who was stationed in front of the closed door on 12th Street.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@satby: Good for her. I hate that emo buffoon
Baud
@SenyorDave:
Then he should put his effort in supporting candidates who can win in those areas.
bluefoot
On a lighter note, some of the signs I liked best today in Boston:
Prevent unintended presidencies, fund Planned Parenthood
Make America Good Again
Yes we can. We did. We will.
We shall over comb (plus nice graphic)
There were a lot of racial justice signs, more than I expected. Including one carried by a white guy saying white solidarity with black lives and calling for reparations – I couldn’t get close enough to talk to him unfortunately.
I did see one woman with a “blue lives matter” shirt wearing a Trump banner, and a couple standing in the Park Street station holding pro-Trump signs.
satby
@amk: the main organizers were Wilmerbots. Listen to the reaction of the crowd when Judd says “Hillary” at the end of a list of pioneering women, there was a lot of resentment towards the organizers over downplaying Clinton’s history making candidacy.
Baud
@satby: The organizers were OK at the event, however. Credit where credit is due. Moore lost the plot.
tobie
@chopper: My thoughts, too. 470,000 Metro rides were logged by 1 pm. That doesn’t include the 1800 buses at Union Station and the absolute booked Amtrak and MARC trains, not to speak of people walking from homes and hotels in DC. I’ve been to numerous marches in DC and haven’t seen anything like this in ages.
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
@rikyrah: HOLY SHIT THIS IS BASICALLY WHAT I’M DOING GOD I FUCKING HATE THESE PEOPLE.
Another Scott
I posted the photos of the DC Rally/March that I managed to take before my battery died here.
Lots and lots of closely-spaced people!
It was a very good day.
Cheers,
Scott.
LAO
@randy khan: I live a half a block from a precinct in manhattan and more than 50% of the officers’ personal cars have trump stickers and I’ve seen a number of them off-duty wearing Trump T-shirts. I think the NYPD’s behavior was more influenced by the predominantly white, middle class make up of the crowd.
Skepticat
My niece and more than 10,000 of her friends marched in Portland, Maine, though the temps were just a bit about freezing. I was a child of the ’60s and now am in my 70s, but I’m pleased to see her run with the banner I’ve passed her. (I can hold up only a light little sign.) This has been an inspiring day that gives me hope for our country–and damn, we need that.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I heard bits and pieces of Moore. He said some good things, like people have to run for office (he started out running for the school board by getting 20 signatures). But he also said that “we won but we lost” twice in 16 years (referring to the popular vote in 2000 and 2016). As if that’s just the fault of the Democratic nominee.
He’s a Wilmer guy and won’t let it go, but if you ignore that stuff (and it can be hard to do so) it seemed a pretty good as a speech to fire people up.
But, I wasn’t able to hear the whole thing, so maybe I missed that.
I do wish that he would put much more emphasis on the barriers that the GOP has put up rather than just beat up on the Democratic party, though. We have to fight them in many, many more ways than just running lefty candidates and (somehow) fixing the campaign finance system…
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott: He spent much of the last eight years on tour with Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, bleating and literally screaming about how Obama had betraaaaayed us. And of course he was one of the loudest Nader supporters because not a dime’s worth of difference
amk
@Another Scott: he is a grifter from the loony left. poutrage de jour is his shtick.
Another Scott
@satby: That really was great.
More on Nina Donovan and Ashley Judd, and Nina’s version.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Scott: Nina’s version is better. Obvs. Props to Judd for giving her publicity.
Another Scott
@tobie: It was pretty neat to be taking the Yellow line in from Virginia and while we were crossing the river to look across to the I-395 bridge and see the traffic backed up and people in pink pu ss y hats walking into DC and waving.
I was trapped on Independence Avenue during the Rally and couldn’t get a sight-line to see anyone on the Mall. Independence is the street on the right edge of this picture. It’s clear that there were lots of people there today, and most of them weren’t even on Independence Avenue.
Cheers,
Scott.
tobie
@Another Scott: Yes, it was my impression too that we were spread out all over the place. What a day! So happy to find out that knitting is now a liberal hobby! Good on you for making the trek from Virginia.
satby
@Another Scott: @Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, Nina is awesome, the author always has more gut emotion in her delivery I think. But Ashley Judd made sure we all heard Nina, so good for her too.
J R in WV
Tucson:
WHITE MOUNTAIN APACHE WOMEN showing up in Tucson… that is so cool.
Those women are still fighting after, what, about
150250 years of armed oppression!!! [Fixed that, forgot about the Spanish oppression before we got started!] That sets the standard, doesn’t it!KlareCole
Great March at Lexington, KY. Local newspaper said 5K, I would say 10. In a state that votes in McConnell & Paul, votes for an R governor who dismantled the model ACA Kynect, voted for Rump with 600K on the ACA, with only a population of 4.3 mil, to be surrounded by thousands of liberals was a major thrill. Very heartening. Now if we could just hear from our daughter at the DC march. Collapsing from a wonderful day.
No One You Know
@JerryN: Dang! I saw a couple of Free Melania signs but didn’t take any of those…phone battery long dead by then.
People jammed coffee shops and good restaurants during and after the march, and left their signs outside. Made me laugh–I thought of the old adage, “leave your weapons at the door.”