On the success of the Women’s March – and why it’s not enough.

My flatmates and I started planning for the Women’s March back in December. The three of us knew that I was heading home for Christmas, and wouldn’t be back in the United States until mid-January, so decisions had to made. Would I be back on time, and have enough money to travel down to Washington with one of them? Or would I stay and march in San Francisco with the other?
We weren’t the only ones whose New Year’s Resolution for 2017 was to raise our voices and be heard. Across the world, over 2.6 million people took the streets on Saturday January 21, and marched in support of women’s rights, and against America’s new President, who has consistently and repeatedly showed an abusive and oppressive disdain for women, his misogyny also intersecting with a deep-rooted strand of homophobia, xenophobia and racism.
That 2.6 million, by the way? Crowd scientists are estimating that it’s over three times the number of people who turned out for Trump’s inauguration the day before – though, of course, the ego-driven President is already disputing that: not with figures or facts, just blind assertions that he is popular and beloved and, of course, always right.
In a press briefing on Saturday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer went on the offensive. “This was the largest audience," he insisted, "to ever witness an Inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.” Spicer did not provide any verifiable numbers. The conclusion had to be that he and the President were in denial. Also on Saturday, Trump used his time at a meeting in CIA headquarters, to complain about what he perceived to be the media’s attempts to downplay the size of Friday’s crowd. Again, no figures, or evidence of any kind, were provided that might contradict existing figures.
I do know that my flatmates and I didn’t watch the inauguration. We know that Donald Trump is now the President, and will unfortunately have to listen to him for four years. But that didn’t have to start on Friday. On Friday, there was work to do.

PUSSY HAT PROJECT
One of my flatmates was already on a plane to Washington when I stopped by Gravel and Gold, a woman’s clothing store in Mission, San Francisco. Gravel and Gold is an independent, woman-owned design collective, known for their famous “boob shirts” - tops and t-shirts emblazoned with breasts. All day Friday, Gravel and Gold held protest sign-making workshops, supplying poster boards, stickers, paints and materials so that people headed to the Women’s March could make signs. There was no charge for materials or any obligation to buy anything in the store – San Francisco merchants were just trying to facilitate women, to enable them to make their voices heard.
The workshops were packed with women and children, decorating their signs with rainbow flags, bright stickers and the sharpest of phrases. “We Shall Overcomb” was popular. A blonde woman beside me beautifully scribed “If You Take Away My Birth Control I’ll Just Make More Feminists” on her poster board. “Here for my Sisters, Not Just My Cis-ters” was another great one, indicating support for the trans and gender non-conforming community. “We’re only going to get Browner, and Queerer, and Witchier, and Louder and Prouder and Stronger and Watch The Dinosaurs Die Out” was written in perfect lettering on another.
“This Pussy Grabs Back” was also a popular one – a necessary reminder that America’s new President said that when he wants to touch and kiss women, “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
I spent the workshop sadly realising that my artistic skills do not match my levels of passion, but I did my best on my double-sided sign. “Nasty Women Against Trump”, I stencilled on one side. And because the influence of the day-job as a film critic is ever strong, on the other side I wrote, “CBS: Donald Trump Approval Rating – 32%. Rotten Tomatoes: Paul Blart Mall Cop – 33%.”
(You can debate those numbers all you like, Trump. We both know the truth. Some facts are just facts – not “post-facts” or “alternative facts”, just facts.)
Waking up in San Francisco on Saturday morning, the photos were already streaming in from around America and the world – including Dublin. I couldn’t remember even hearing about the post-inauguration Women’s March in Dublin before. I remember the celebrations, both times Obama was inaugurated, but not a Women’s March. Maybe that’s the one and only power Trump will never admit to: the power in uniting and inspiring people across the globe to come together and act – against him. Seeing women across America and abroad come together and march was the perfect antidote to any post-inauguration despondence – if my sisters had turned up for me, damn straight, I was going to turn out for them.
Walking through Mission towards the Bart station to travel to City Hall, crowds of women were wearing and handing out Pussy Hats - pink woollen hats handmade by women to protest Trump’s rampant misogyny. Activists Kat Coyle, Janya Zweiman and Krista Suh had shared the knitting pattern on the Pussy Hat Project for free, saying they “want to see a sea of pink.”

MARCH AGAINST HATE
The pussy hats were indeed out in force – and were needed. Saturday in San Francisco was a cold and dark day, lashing rain from 3pm, till late in the evening. But that didn’t stop people from turning up – more than 100,000 of us, to be precise, in San Francisco alone.
Approaching the Bart station, I saw something I had never seen before: a line, snaking out of the station, up the stairs, and down the street – just to get on the train. So many protesters had turned out that every train to City Hall was full, and the line to get train tickets was forty minutes.
In the line, people started talking and admiring each other’s signs, as well as talking about their new President. “Did you see all the fact-checks of his speech?” exclaimed one woman. “Literally his first speech as President and it’s already a mass of lies.”
Parents had brought their children along too, and many of the toddlers had signs of their own. An adorable Latina girl in wellington boots held a pink sign that said “If You Build A Wall, I Will Grow Up And Knock It Down.” A blue-eyed boy held a sign that was beautiful in its understatement “I Don’t Like Bullies.”
When my flatmate and I finally arrived at City Hall, we could barely move for the crowds – not that it was unpleasant. On the contrary, volunteers were handing out snacks, bottled water and plastic ponchos, ensuring that everyone was taken care of, on the rainy day. The crowd was the most diverse I’d ever seen at a protest in San Francisco; as well as a lot of Spanish, I heard smatterings of French, German and Chinese among the crowd, as well as seeing several groups using sign language.
The diversity of the crowd was echoed by the speakers at the rally, who included writer and trans activist Julia Serano, who spoke about the oppression facing all women, and particularly LGBTQ individuals.
“We are participating in an organized resistance against forces that are actively trying to disempower and disenfranchise us” Serano said. “But what we are engaged in today is not identity politics. If it’s anything, it’s empathy politics.”
City Supervisor Jane Kim also spoke passionately, opening her speech by declaring “My name is Jane Kim, and I’m a nasty woman. How many of you are nasty women out there? How many of you plan on getting nastier in 2017?”
Kim spoke about the importance of intersectional feminism, noting that she worked with a team of women of colour, and declared her intention to support women of colour as Trump continues to attack them.
“We will join you to march against hate,” Kim said, “and we will vote Trump out of San Francisco.”
At 5pm, as the evening began to turn dark, the lights on City Hall came on. They were bright pink – another sign that San Francisco was committed to supporting women.
The march was peaceful and quietly determined, with no arrests or violent incidents reported. Indeed, even the police presence was barely noticeable – which does highlight some of the nuanced issues with the Women’s March.

At every Black Lives Matter march I have attended in San Francisco, the police presence has been inescapable and intimidating. Cops and squad cars have lined each side of the march, guns visible, hands on batons, and snipers perching atop City Hall and the surrounding buildings – proof that Black people in America are policed and persecuted in a way that White people are not. The Black Lives Matter marches were also notably smaller, indicating that many activists and indeed white women will only turn out to protests that are in their own interest.
Though the photos from Dublin’s Women’s March were beautiful and inspiring, during my trip home at Christmas I had heard a lot of transphobic, Islamophobic and anti-refugee comments. As ever, conversations about abortion often ignored the concerns of working-class women, homeless women, women with disabilities. Were trans women, women with disabilities, Muslim women, Syrian women, homeless women, refugee women in the minds of the protesters in Dublin, or was the buck stopping with Repeal the 8th? Of course Repeal is a vital issue, but it’s not the only issue facing women today. Are we doing enough for the others?
These thoughts lingered with me as I finally made my way home from the protest, cold and wet but invigorated. The Women’s March was an inspiring, unifying event – but it was an event, a single day, that was now over.
The truth is this: a protest is not activism – it’s the advertisement, the awareness-building, the call to action. Activism is not an event, or an afternoon, but a commitment to long-term action. My hope from the Women’s March is that everyone who turned up on the streets of San Francisco, of Boston, of New York, of Washington, of Dublin – that we will continue to turn up, every day. That we continue to fight for the rights of women, no matter what race or ethnicity or religion. That we support the LGBTQ community and take their concerns and safety seriously. That we include women from different socio-economic backgrounds and women with disabilities in our conversations and actions. That we fight against institutionalised and systematic racism, even when it doesn’t directly affect us, or indeed even privileges us over other races or ethnicities.
Because we’re all in this together. And not just for marches, not just when it suits us, not just when it affects us. But always.
So let’s take action. Together. Now.