Anniversary Of Womens March Carries New Message: Power To The Polls

Hundreds of demonstrations got underway Saturday, and will continue Sunday, to mark the first anniversary of the women’s marches organically formed in early 2017 in protest of President Donald Trump’s surprise presidential win.

But organizers and many participants are rallying under a new mandate this year: to influence electoral politics, with much of the messaging including voter participation and support for would-be candidates.

More than 250 events took place in major cities including Chicago, New York, Dallas and Philadelphia, as well as smaller locales like Concord, N.H., Fargo, N.D. and Midland, Mich. The movement has international traction; London’s march is on Sunday.

Trump marked his one-year anniversary in office Saturday with travel plans scuttled by continued Congressional work on a funding bill that had shut down the federal government for the first time since 2013.

In many ways, much has changed since the 2017, mostly peaceful, demonstrations ushered in such cultural emblems as the pink “pussy” hats and clever sandwich boards. Saturday’s marches cap off a year of swelling support of the #metoo movement, bringing to light high-profile sexual-abuse and sexual-harassment allegations in Hollywood, politics across both parties and media, that advocates hope will change workplace climates across industries.

Read: American women have reached a milestone for the first time since 2006

Julianne McShane, 23, a journalist at the New York march with two friends from NYU, said women are better off now than a year ago “because of this cultural moment we’re in.”

“There’s this greater consciousness about the common obstacles that women face,” she said. “Because of that, there’s also more conversation around how to overcome them.”

Her friend Jasmin Kaur Multani, 22, who works as a scientist, agreed.

“I think we are a lot more conscious of our growth and the direction we want to go to,” she said. “Now we have to talk about the concrete steps to get there.”

With a wider range of smaller local events this year, many organizers around the country had predicted crowds may not rival 2017 numbers, although Ann Scholhamer, one of the organizers, has claimed that the march is already as large as last year, the Chicago Sun-Times tweeted.

Read: Next for #TimesUp and #MeToo: More women CEOs

The march has fueled nonprofits focused on grass-roots action, such as March On, which created a super PAC to support left-leaning candidates. The group plans to begin to “crowd source” its agenda, releasing on Saturday an interactive poll that it expects hundreds of thousands of people to take over the next two weeks, the Wall Street Journal reported. The results will help inform March On’s selection of candidates.

“We’ll go to red states and swing states where it matters most,” said Vanessa Wruble, executive director, according to the Journal. She said March On already got involved in the Virginia elections and the special election in Alabama, where Democrat Doug Jones pulled out an upset win in part because of a sexual-abuse scandal for his rival Roy Moore.

Diane Stark, 69, of Long Island, who said she volunteered on the Bernie Sanders campaign, called President Trump “dangerous for this country and democracy.”

Asked to compare this year to last, she said, “There’s definitely been an assault on women by this administration... but I think women are feeling empowered over this past year so I think that’s a positive thing.”

Read: Trump lawyer used shell company to pay off ex-porn star: report

The Saturday events come a day after Trump spoke to anti-abortion activists who gathered at the National Mall for the 45th annual rally known as the March for Life.

Trump’s speech was the first time in the event’s history that a sitting president addressed the crowd live via video feed. Recent presidents from both parties had not been direct participants in the rally as the issue remains divisive even with abortion legal for more than 40 years.

“Under my administration,” Trump told the group, “we will always defend the very first right in the Declaration of Independence, and that is the right to life.”

Beyond social issues and the government shutdown, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Friday found that a year after Trump’s inauguration, the share of Americans who are satisfied with the economy has jumped to 69%, the highest level since 2001. The tax law that Trump signed last month has been gaining acceptance, as the share of Americans who thought it was a good idea grew to 30%, from 24% last month. A larger share, 38%, this month called the bill a bad idea, the poll found.

The president responded to Saturday’s events.

Looking to the midterm elections, the poll found that voters prefer a Democratic-led Congress over a Republican one by a six-point margin—a narrower advantage than the 11-point lead that Democrats held in December. Pundits have said the GOP will be challenged in polling high under the shadow of a president with unusually low ratings of his job performance and personal qualities at this point of an administration.

Here are a few tweets from Saturday’s marches: