On This Day in History: January 21

The 2017 Women's March

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“Grab them by the pussy,” he said. When Trump won the presidency in 2016 by negative three million votes, a lot of women were righteously pissed. Not all women, though. Some believed Trump was their kind of guy, their Jaundiced Jesus. But plenty were angry, and the day after his inauguration they took to the streets to let that guy with the personality of a wank sock know they were ready to resist.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: January 21, 2017--

In 2016, 39% of women voters cast their ballot for the blatant misogynist with a couple dozen sexual assault and rape accusations against him. That percentage is not as forgiving as you may imagine, because 47% of white women voted for him. The average percentage was pulled down by Hispanic women (28% Trump support) and Black women (whose support for Trump was so fucking low it didn’t even register as a single percentage point).

The Women’s March took place on January 21, 2017, but its planning began on the saddest day of 2016, the day after that pumpkin pustule won the electoral college. On November 9, retired lawyer Teresa Shook created a Facebook event for a march on Washington, and within a day hundreds of thousands of people said fuck yes we need to let that semi-ambulatory skin disease know just what we think of him and his bullshit. The massive level of interest became the impetus for organizing the Women’s March, with the involvement of numerous activists.

But it wasn’t dubbed an anti-Trump march. At least, not technically. One leader, Linda Sarsour, proclaimed it was “a stand on social justice and human rights issues ranging from race, ethnicity, gender, religion, immigration and healthcare.” Put that way, it sure sounds like an anti-Trump march. He hates that stuff.

The Washington march had almost half a million attendees. Vice President Kamala Harris, then senator of California, and Senator Tammy Duckworth spoke, as did several celebrities, and for some reason people thought inviting Michael Moore was a good idea. Across the rest of the country about five million marched. Worldwide marches tallied up another few million. People around the world were fucking pissed that this guy was now president, and rightfully so. Look at what he did. Such an asshole.

It needs to be mentioned that originator Teresa Shook accused four of the march’s leaders, including Sarsour, of antisemitism and called for them to step down. Shook ended up dissociating herself from the march.

Nevertheless, the marches sent a powerful message that there were a lot of people who weren’t pleased with Trump and would not tolerate his presidency a day longer than necessary. And many of those people showed up to vote him out in 2020.

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