Thousands gather in Washington for a march days before Trump takes office

WASHINGTON (AP) – Eight years since its historic first march, the Women’s March returns to the nation’s capital on Saturday just before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Rebranded and reorganized, the rally has a new name – the people’s march — as a means of expanding support, especially at a reflective moment for progressive organizing after Trump’s decisive victory in November. The Republican will take the oath of office on Monday.

Women are outraged by Trump’s 2016 presidential victory flocked to Washington in 2017 and organized large rallies in cities across the country, building the base of a grassroots movement that became known as the Women’s March. The Washington rally alone attracted over 500,000 marchers, and millions more participated in local marches around the country, marking one of the largest one-day demonstrations in US history.

This year, the march is expected to be about one-tenth the size of the first and comes amid a subdued moment of reflection as many progressive voters navigate feelings of exhaustion, disappointment and despair following the loss of Vice President Kamala Harris. The relative silence is in stark contrast to the white-knuckled fury of the inaugural rally, when massive crowds shouted demands into megaphones and marched in pink pussy hats in response to Trump’s first election win.

“The reality is, it’s just hard to catch lightning in a bottle,” said Tamika Middleton, executive director of the Women’s March. “It was a very special moment. In 2017, we hadn’t seen a Trump presidency and the kind of vitriol that it represented.”

The movement broke down after the highly successful day of protests over accusations that it was not diverse enough. This year’s rebrand as a People’s March is the result of an overhaul aimed at broadening the group’s appeal. Saturday’s demonstration will promote themes related to feminism, racial justice, anti-militarization and other issues and will conclude with discussions held by various social justice organizations.

The People’s March is unusual in “the sheer range of issues brought together under one umbrella,” said Jo Reger, a sociology professor who researches social movements at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. Women’s suffrage marches, for example, were focused on a specific goal of the right to vote.

For a broad-based social justice movement like the march, conflicting visions are impossible to avoid, and there is “tremendous pressure” on organizers to meet everyone’s needs, Reger said. But she also said that some disagreement isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“Often what it does is bring change and bring in new perspectives, especially of underrepresented voices,” Reger said.

Middleton, of the Women’s March, said a massive demonstration like the one in 2017 is not the goal of Saturday’s event. Instead, it’s to focus attention on a broader set of issues—women’s and reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, immigration, climate, and democracy—rather than centering it more narrowly around Trump.

“We don’t think of the march as the playoffs,” Middleton said. “How do we get the people who are emerging into organizations and into their political homes so that they can continue to fight in their communities for the long term?”