You won’t find many upbeat Inauguration Day watch parties in New York City this year, but you will find plenty of gatherings of protesters, including the artistically inclined.
Sign-making parties and events have popped up around the city to accompany the protests that are expected to fill the streets here and a few hours south in Washington, D.C., where many New Yorkers will travel to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump.
Illustrator Jen Mussari, 28, was planning to work on her own sign at Small City, a Gowanus co-working space, when she and friends decided to open the event to anyone and post it on Facebook.
“While we’re all freelancers, we have friends who have full-time jobs in the city who like to come to things like this — so we wanted to open this up to them as well,” she said.
Like many New Yorkers, those at the event were deeply disappointed at the outcome of the election. And like many protesters, they seemed to be concerned about what a Trump presidency will mean for women. Mussari will head to Washington and plans to bring along a sign that reads: “Girl just want to have FUN-damental human rights.”
She said the election has spurred a sense of community among like-minded women, recalling a gathering she attended shortly after Trump won.
“It was a women’s group meeting, and it just turned into a support group,” she said. “We needed that.”
Here’s a look at some of the other signs that were in the works at the Gowanus event.