WASHINGTON – As thousands converged on Freedom Plaza for the annual Women’s March to the White House Saturday afternoon, 38-year-old Robert Haswell walked hand in hand with his six-year-old daughter, Lorelei.
The social worker from Connecticut made the trip with his mother and sister, driven by a desire to expose his daughter to what he believed was a powerful gathering of women advocating for their rights.
“I wanted her to see that defending your rights and having a voice matters and that you can be heard,” Haswell said.
Saturday’s march took place almost eight years after the inaugural Women’s March in 2017, held the day after former President Donald Trump’s inauguration and attracted a crowd estimated to be at least 470,000.
There were no official estimates for crowd size, but organizers claimed in an interview that there were 10,000 in attendance. Although this year’s turnout was significantly smaller than in 2017, the messages remained consistent, with many participants holding signs that referenced Trump’s offensive comments about women, including the infamous Access Hollywood Tapes where he stated he could “grab ‘em by the pussy” when you’re a star.
Before the speakers took the stage to rally the crowd, attendees filled the plaza and surrounding streets, many donning Harris/Walz campaign gear. They mingled and exchanged pins with people at various tables advocating for progressive social issues including gun control and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Aryana Morales, a freshman at George Washington University, attended the event with fellow students from “Pins for Purpose,” an organization aimed at engaging voters and raising awareness for specific causes through pin distribution. At the March, she was handing out pins that featured the slogan “We Choose Freedom 2024” alongside a picture of Kamala Harris.
Morales said attending the rally and seeing people across all generations come together in support of women’s rights was especially inspiring as she prepares to vote for the first time.
For many attendees, the Women’s March was a family affair, with participants sharing that making the trip to Washington to attend has become a cherished tradition.
Twenty-three year old Eva Tell now lives in Washington, but she was part of three generations of women in her family who attended Saturday’s march. Joined by her mother, Shari, and her grandmother who were visiting from East Brunswick, New Jersey, the trio reminisced about waking up at 4 a.m. for a nearly four-hour long bus ride to attend the inaugural march in 2017.
Regarding their motive for attending this year’s event, Shari Tell said, “We’re just excited to see the first woman president.”
Robert Thweatt, a 63-year-old retired financial controller from Texas, also has a long history of attending women’s marches. Alongside his husband Chad and a group of friends, Thweatt shared that they have participated in marches in their home state in Dallas, Houston and Austin, but this marked their third time marching in the nation’s capital.
Although the event drew some counter-protesters, including a few men carrying large crucifixes and chanting anti-abortion sentiments around the rally’s perimeter, the event remained largely peaceful, with about a dozen police officers occasionally forming a barrier between the two groups.
A few organizers took the stage, rallying the crowd with chants of “We are not going back,” a slogan synonymous with Harris’s campaign. The march proceeded down Pennsylvania Avenue toward 15th Street, concluding at the Ellipse—just four days after Harris’s closing remarks at the same location.
While many participants were hopeful about the possibility of electing the first female president Tuesday, others attended the march out of concern for what lies ahead.
Nancy Anton traveled from Taylors, South Carolina, dressed as a Handmaid, inspired by Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel in which a fundamentalist regime emerges in response to a fertility crisis.
“I think Margaret Atwood was a visionary, unfortunately,” Anton said. “I wish it were all just fiction, but it’s something scary enough that we really need to stand up and take notice.”
Story by Audrey Pachuta, video by Hannah Webster and photo gallery by Caroline Killilea.
