Two days before Donald Trump’s second inauguration as president, a few thousand New Yorkers took to the streets Saturday for the “People’s March,” reminding the incoming administration that they will continue to fight for reproductive rights, climate action, sensible gun laws, and LGBTQIA+ and immigration rights.
The event, which coincided with other People’s Marches in Washington D.C. and other cities across the country, kicked off in Foley Square with a rally. The demonstrators then headed up 6th Avenue to Washington Square Park, where the show of solidarity against Trump’s right-wing agenda commenced.
The People’s March evolved from the Women’s March, which was born in 2017 when Trump first became President. Jay W. Walker, a member of the political action groups Rise & Resist and Gays Against Guns, told amNewYork Metro that rebranding the march was vitally important.
“Because right now, with this incoming administration, everyone who is not a rich, straight, cisgender, white Christian male is under threat,” Walker said.
Walker predicted the Trump administration would do the bidding of organizations like the Council for National Policy and the Heritage Foundation from day one.
The Heritage Foundation, a hyper-conservative think tank, drafted Project 2025, a 900-page manifesto that, among other things, calls for the elimination of the Department of Education, a ban on abortions and access to contraception, expanding immigrant “detention” centers, an “expedited removal” of undocumented immigrants, rollbacks of legal protections for the LGBTQIA+ community, including gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, and eliminating climate policies.
“[Trump] is going to start attacking immigrants. He’s going to start attacking queer and trans people. He’s going to start attacking our education system. He’s going to try to get Planned Parenthood completely shut down, which means not just abortion, as we all know. It means mammograms; it means reproductive health care,” Walker explained.
Manhattan resident Lynn Altman joined the march to show the country that people still had a voice, even though many felt defeated.
“I’m afraid of irreversible change of women’s rights and human rights and immigrant rights being taken away, systematically to the point of no return. And I’m worried that hatred and fear will take over this country and be unleashed even further than it already is,” Altman told amNewYork Metro.
Estella Sandifer, 17, feared the country was entering a “really dark time” and, besides LGBTQIA+ rights and climate justice, marched for reproductive rights.
“I’m fearful that I won’t have those rights by the time that I’m an adult, and I want to protect my rights now because I feel like it really matters that us, as women, we stand together, and us as a society, stand together to protect one another,” Sandifer said.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams joined the crowd in Washington Square Park, urging participants to be the “bright light during dark times” and showing a united front. Williams predicted the next four years would be a “hell of a doozy.”
“In a few days, people who purport to be Christians, I don’t understand what book they read from, but they’re going to be talking about mass deportation and a scale that we have never seen,” said Williams, referring to the incoming Trump administration’s plans of large-scale immigration raids as soon as Tuesday.
Lorelei Crean, a transgender youth from Washington Heights, recalled that Trump spent $215 million on anti-transgender campaign ads.
“As a trans child, I know my rights are on the chopping block on day one,” Crean said. “I’m scared, but I have to remember that Donald Trump is afraid of me, too.”
