Los Angeles civil rights attorney Gloria Allred on Saturday appeared at a news conference in a downtown Washington, D.C., hotel with four women who have accused President Donald Trump in the past of sexual harassment. The women said they will be participating in the Women's March on Washington.
"All of these women are someone's daughter," Allred said.
The women are:
The three main cable news networks may have been equal in their wall-to-wall coverage of Friday’s inauguration and its festivities, but during Saturday’s coverage of the Women’s March on Washington, the historical divide between Fox News and its compatriots was firmly reinstated.
CNN, MSNBC and Fox News were all dinged by many viewers for choosing to open their Saturday morning coverage with footage of newly minted President Trump at the National Prayer Service rather than the estimated 500,000 marchers.
But by midmorning, while CNN and MSNBC had turned their multi-screened attention to the throngs of protesters, Fox, which had drawn a tweet of praise from the president for its coverage of the inauguration, continued to do just that.
Like a great pink-capped wave, rolling from one edge of the country to the other, more than a million protesters marched through the streets of America on Saturday in an unprecedented show of discontent scarcely a day into the new Trump administration.
From resort towns like Bend, Ore., to the skyscraper-lined streets of New York City, it was an outpouring that surely gladdened critics of President Trump and lifted the faint spirits of Democrats crushed by his upset victory.
But once the protest signs come down and buoyant marchers tuck their “pussy hats” away in their closets, what remains is a stark reality facing the left-leaning throngs: a government in Washington run by the GOP and more than 30 state capitals where Republicans enjoy unchecked control.
Any big political march is both a test of a city’s spatial limitations and an exercise in seeing and using that city in a new way. This may be especially true in Los Angeles, a city still trying to shake off an outdated reputation as a place without a significant pedestrian culture or vibrant public realm.
The Los Angeles edition of Saturday’s women’s march was in that sense another sign of the city’s continuing effort to redefine, or at least recalibrate, its public-ness.
What really struck me Saturday as I watched the march descend on Pershing Square and make its way to the foot of City Hall, was how certain spaces and corridors absorbed the unusual mass of humanity far better than others. The LAPD called it the largest gathering downtown since the immigration rights protests of 2006, attracting “hundreds of thousands” of people, according to multiple media reports.
It is often artists who are a public voice of opposition. And artists need to bring that voice of opposition to this cause — with every drop of blood and every tear.
They began to gather just after 7 a.m. Saturday at the Good Luck Gallery, a small art space on Chung King Road in Los Angeles’ Chinatown. Owner Paige Wery, who showcases the work of outsider artists, threw open the doors in advance of the women’s march in Los Angeles to offer artists, friends and colleagues a base from which to attend the downtown action.
She also offered hot coffee, a bathroom and a table full of art supplies — so that last-minute arrivals could produce protest posters.
Paul Kopeikin, who runs Culver City’s Kopeikin Gallery, showed up with boxes of doughnuts and a fabric sign on his back that read “Not My President.”
The trees were filled with bras outside the Women's March on Washington. Behind the rally stage, branches were draped with brassiers, presumably from the participants in the march.
"Enough is enough! Stop the war on women. Leave Medicare, Medicaid and Planned Parenthood alone!!!" read one sign. "Resist!" said another.
Bras weren't the only feminine intimate product used to send messages. Marchers wrote notes of protest on women's sanitary pads that were affixed to a wall. Among the messages: "Women's rights are human rights!" "My body, my choice!" "Nasty women fight orange trolls." And with a drawing of a wire hanger, "Never again!"
The Women's March on Washington may have been filled with celebrities, singers and all sorts of Hollywood A-listers, but it was longtime feminist and writer Gloria Steinem who really revved up the crowd.
Upon exiting the Women's March after her keynote speech in which she emphasized that protest means more than hitting the "send" button, a crowd formed around Steinem. Mothers rushed up to introduce their daughters to her; protesters held out their signs for her autograph.
Even California's Wendy Carrillo seemed excited to tell Steinem that she she is a candidate to replace Xavier Becerra in the 34th Congressional District. "I'm running!" Carrillo exclaimed.
New Yorkers were struggling to to remember when there might have been more people out on the streets than during Saturday’s woman’s march -- perhaps back in 1982, when there was a huge anti-nuclear protest, or during the marches against the Vietnam War, or more recently, after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Organizers estimated the crowd Saturday at 250,000, about four times what had been expected, and some police officers said they thought it was larger.
Women and men, girls and boys, more people than even jaded New Yorkers could imagine, gridlocked the streets and sidewalks from Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza near the United Nations, jamming 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue as they headed up to Trump Tower, the permanent residence of the newly inaugurated president.
Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez captured these images of the people and placards along the Woman's March route in Washington.