Rebecca NelsonAmelia Koethen
“Donald Trump, don't you know, we the women are saying no!”
As Trump’s inauguration festivities kicked off on Friday, hundreds of protesters chanted and crowded around a security checkpoint in downtown Washington, where people celebrating Trump’s inauguration had lined up to get onto the National Mall. Just blocks away, police arrested a group of nearly 100 rioters who had smashed windows, thrown rocks and overturned trash cans. But here, at 10th and E Streets Northwest, the protesters remained mostly peaceful.
They came from Durango, Colorado, Pittsburgh, New York City, Seattle — all to show their horror at the dawning Trump era. “I felt like it was my responsibility to stand here in solidarity with people trying to defend our rights, and women's rights, in this country,” Amelia Koethen, a 34-year-old from Albany, New York, told me. She stood in front of the checkpoint arm-in-arm with fellow protesters, forming part of a human chain blocking the entrance to the inaugural festivities. “To prove that we're not scared. And we're not going away.”
Just then, two men wearing Trump hats tried to get through the crush. The protesters shouted them down, closing in: “Go another way! Go another way!”
Rebecca NelsonMary Ellen Carafice
The celebrants, outnumbered, soon relented, and walked off, rolling their eyes.
As a whole, the protest had a defiant, self-assured air. But individually, many demonstrators acknowledged their fears about the incoming administration. Megan Malloy, a 24-year-old from New York City, clutched a homemade “Trump is a Racist and a Sexual Abuser” sign. “I'm scared and I'm angry,” she told me. “Mostly for people I know who are way more vulnerable” than she is: people of color, her transgender friends, people who rely on the Affordable Care Act for basic health care. Samantha Duncan, a 19-year-old from Durango, Colorado, drove across the country to show her support for the resistance. “I am not a fan of Trump,” she said, “but I am glad that his election caused so many people to come together.” Mary Ellen Carafice, a 34-year-old from Brooklyn, wore a pink knit hat she’d made as part of the Pussy Hat Project, an effort to make a visual statement at the March and also a reference to Trump’s infamous Access Hollywood tape. “In 20 years, I knew that if I wasn't here on this day, I would regret it,” Carafice told me. “We have to show up. We have to do something.”
Trump was minutes away from taking the oath of office when Lucy Clabby, a 23-year-old from Pittsburgh, told me she still hadn’t fully processed what was happening. “It is a reality I'm having trouble comprehending,” she said. “But I have to learn to understand so I can fight it.”
Will it ever seem real?
“When bills become laws and those bills start affecting my friends,” she said. “Then it will.”
As Trump took the oath of office, celebratory canons fired, and the U.S. Marine Band played “Hail to the Chief” for the first time under President Trump, the rain that had held off all morning finally started to pour.
To Claire Addis, a 29-year-old who moved to D.C. just last month, the weather seemed fitting. “I want him to feel unwelcome,” she told me, holding a “Not My President” sign above her head. “I want him to feel like the world doesn't want this to happen.”
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Rebecca Nelson is a magazine writer in New York. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post magazine, GQ, and many other publications.
