For this reporter, who was living on Maui at the time, it seemed crucial to be one of the many who woke up before dawn to pack into a bar that had opened early to screen President Obama’s inauguration. The crowd cheered after he took the oath, and as former President George W. Bush (whose villainousness to the left seems tame in retrospect) and his wife Laura stepped into that helicopter, there was a collective sigh of relief.
But even as hopeful fans celebrated what they thought would be a new era of peace, equality and economic opportunity, an ideological insurgency loomed, one that manifested itself in the wildly successful Tea Party movement.
The anti-Tea?
On Jan. 20, 2017, a new president was again welcomed by supporters and excoriated by the opposition. But this time around, as conservatives celebrated Obama’s departure (and Trump’s critics tore into an uncommonly divisive inauguration speech), the protests were immediate — and of historic proportions.
The Women’s March on Washington on the day after Trump’s inauguration drew an estimated million people to the city, including thousands from Florida who packed buses and airplanes in order to be among them. Those who stayed behind flocked to St. Petersburg’s Demens Landing in record numbers that day to speak out about an administration they fear will push back the gains the country has made in environmental policy, LGBTQ equality and embrace of diversity.
“I’m feeling pumped up,” said Diane Snyder of New Port Richey, who spoke to CL in D.C. after a long bus ride. “I’m marching to show the power of women after the election… I think of ‘we the people’ as all of the U.S. citizens. Everyone. There’s not exclusion of anyone in that language, anywhere.”
The hope among organizers is that the protesters — whether in Sarasota or Kahului or DC — will stay engaged and remain active throughout Trump’s reign. Contrary to critics from the right, who seem to think protesters are merely complaining about the election results, the marches were more about kicking off an era of vigilance and holding politicians accountable if they don’t stand up to the administration’s efforts to take away civil rights, access to health care and environmental regulations.
“We realize that he won, and nobody’s fighting that,” said Lisa Perry, who organized the bus trips from St. Pete. “What we’re fighting is the legislation that he’s trying to push through that literally threatens so many of the constituents that he’s supposed to be representing as Commander-in-Chief. We have so many problems with most of the Cabinet members that he’s appointed. And if you go out into the community, there is visceral fear among women, men, children, everyone.”
The protests didn’t begin with the inauguration.
Weeks before the march, nearly 80 activists crowded the sidewalk in front of Sen. Marco Rubio’s Tampa satellite office, urging the recently re-elected Republican to reject Trump’s secretary of state pick, former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson. Their efforts in that regard were unsuccessful; although Rubio had voiced criticism of Tillerson, he ultimately fell into line. Still, they’re flooding his inbox and voicemail on a range of other issues, including Planned Parenthood — the potential defunding of which is a crowd-pleaser for the right.
Artist and activist Suzanne Benton spearheaded the St. Pete leg of the Women’s March. She’d been pleasantly surprised when a few dozen signed up for the event in its first day or two on Facebook. But then the number of RSVPs grew to 17,000, and even more showed up: an estimated 20,000 total. City officials said it was the biggest protest in the city’s history.
The route ran along Bayshore from Demens Landing to the Vinoy, hanging left and then heading back down Beach Drive. As some marchers finished the march, others were still spilling out of the park.
St. Pete Mayor Rick Kriseman, who once made national headlines for tweeting that he would ban Trump from the city in the wake of his call to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., stood to the side of the route and marveled at the size of the crowd.
“I keep waiting for it to thin out there and it hasn’t happened,” said Kriseman, as he stood on a sidewalk along Beach Drive facing the entrance to Demens. “I’ve been standing out here for almost a half hour. It’s just remarkable.”
The message(s) were many, but women’s issues dominated
Those who marched had a long litany of grievances, making the march a target for Trump supporters who criticized its message as incoherent. Members of the Suncoast Sierra Club wore insignia denoting their fears of what the Trump administration would do to environmental regulations. LGBTQ equality advocates wore shirts with the phrase “Love Is Love.” Black Lives Matter shirts abounded (even though some activists complained about a lack of racial diversity at this and other marches). But it’s not like any of the causes conflicted with one another.
Plus, there was an overarching message: the power of women, who a century ago weren’t even allowed to vote, to organize momentously against injustice.
Wearing a Superwoman T-shirt and a sticker that read “Keep Your Laws Off My Body,” Ginessa Perez was there with her daughter Danielle, a soon-to-be college student. Trump’s past comments about women, the anti-woman policies his administration embraces and the misogyny of some Trump supporters does not bode well for campus culture, Ginessa said.
“I’m marching because my daughter’s going to college soon and I want her to go to a safe campus where she doesn’t have to fear sexual violence or rape. Or God forbid that does happen to her or someone, they feel like they can speak up and have a voice and that action will be taken,” Perez said. Her daughter nodded as she spoke.
Marcher Jasmine Riber held a glittery sign that read “I will not go quietly back to 1950,” and said it was a nod to everything women and minorities have overcome in the last 65 years — and how, even as there is more work to do, those gains may now go away.
“When it comes to that time in American history… some people still don’t believe in marital rape,” Riber said. “You are forced to fit the definition of being a woman, a 'lady' instead of choosing the definition yourself. I think in 2017 and recently, a lot of females have been choosing their own definition, and that’s going to go away. People are going to become more quiet and go with that status quo when they don’t have to.”
Just a few feet away from Riber was Vickie Dunn, with her daughter Tiffany and husband Tom, whose sign read “Because I Have 2 Daughters.” Having come of age during the women’s liberation movement, Vickie sees similarities between the attitudes toward women in the 1960s and the attitudes toward women today. Noting the parallels, Vickie said, “This last election really showed me how much we hadn’t achieved yet and how much sexism is alive and well. It’s subtler than it was back in the ’60s, but it’s there.”
She wasn’t wrong. One of the first things Trump did Monday morning was sign an executive order re-instituting a policy that bans public funding of non-government organizations that have anything to do with abortions performed overseas. Trump signed the so-called Mexico City rule or the global gag rule (a Reagan-era policy repealed by Presidents Clinton and Obama and brought back by their Republican successors), and did so surrounded by men. The rules could limit access to contraception, HIV and cervical cancer screenings and other reproductive health services in parts of the world that need it the most.
But how would it succeed?
Organizers know there’s no way to stop an ideologically hard-wired administration from pushing through its policies, especially with the same party holding the reins in Congress and the Oval Office. But they do want the unexpected momentum of this weekend’s protests to continue into 2020. After all, Democrats are notorious for not showing up at the polls in non-presidential years, which is part of the reason Florida and so many other states have a disproportionately high number of Republicans in state legislatures as well as Congress, and why Florida Governor Rick Scott was able to win two terms despite his unpopularity.
“We need to be innovative in the way we engage the community and keep people involved, and events like [these] where we intersect regardless of our individual issues are going to be the thing that is going to keep the momentum going so someone like Donald Trump can’t get elected again,” said organizer Kofi Hunt at an Inauguration Day event in downtown St. Pete called The People’s Inauguration.
Mayor Kriseman, whom many of the marchers greeted as he stood on Beach Drive, is up for reelection later this year, and some consider him vulnerable. If all of the eligible St. Pete voters who attended the Women’s March turn out in the August primary and November general, it could be enough to tip the scales in the face of what could be a monied Republican challenger, one whose views are on par with those of Trump or Vice President Mike Pence.
But even if the movement can unite millions against the negative impacts of Trump policies, party infighting among Democrats, most pronounced in the primary battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, could easily handicap any efforts to fend off the next Rick Scott. Some progressives see an immediate need to abandon the two-party system and shun moderate candidates with whom they disagree. Yet party leadership on the state and national levels muscled exciting yet controversial progressives out of primaries in favor of moderates who could raise money (Alex Sink, Charlie Crist, Patrick Murphy). New directors offer potential for the party to abandon that model, but only if its establishment is finally willing to be bold.
But while the party grapples with the same identity issues that gave the GOP the Tea Party and then Trump, activists have work to do — congressmen to picket, signs to make and marches to plan.
The next March is scheduled for April 15.
Cat Modlin-Jackson and Indhira Suero-Acosta contributed to this story.
This article appears in Jan 26 – Feb 2, 2017.