More than 1,500 people turned out for Milwaukee’s second annual Women’s March

Milwaukee Women's March — Photo: Raymond Jacquette

One year after women staged the largest demonstration in the nation’s history on the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, women throughout the nation marched again Jan. 20.

Many women wore knitted pink cat-ear hats, which have become an emblem of female empowerment and resistance to Trump’s views on women’s rights, immigration, abortion, and LGBT rights.

Just a day earlier, Trump blasted Roe v. Wade in a satellite address to anti-choice activists. “We are with you all the way,” he told participants in The March for Life.

In Milwaukee, more than 1,500 women, men and children gathered on the Milwaukee County Courthouse square. Demonstrators carried signs highlighting a broad range of issues, from voter and reproductive rights to immigration reform and climate change.

Milwaukee Women's March - Why They Marched — **Why they marched**
WiG asked the teenagers above what inspired them to attend Milwaukee’s second annual Women’s Day of Action. Marissa, left, told us, “Now is an important time for us ladies to stand up ... if we don’t say anything ... who will?” Ellen, second from left, said she went because “it’s my future ... and I want it to be fair. I want it to be good” And Riley, on the outside right, said she went to demonstrate against the White House. “Donald Trump keeps screwing us over and we need to fight back,” she explained.
Photo: Raymond Jacquette

Organizers urged participants in the second annual march to take control of Congress from Republicans in 2018.

Sarah Pearson shouted to the crowd, “Get ready in 2018 to take it back,” which was met with applause and chants of “Take it back! Take it back!”

Democratic state Sen. Lena Taylor of Milwaukee led the crowd in a short refrain of Aretha Franklin’s “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”

Former teacher Gisela Terner of Fox Point held a sign giving Trump all F’s on his first-year report card.

Marches also were held in Madison, Eau Claire and Green Bay.

From sea to shining sea

In New York, speakers included Ashley Bennett, a Democrat who was elected Atlantic County, New Jersey freeholder last November. She defeated Republican incumbent John Carman, who had mocked the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, D.C. with a Facebook post asking whether the women would be home in time to cook dinner.

Cathy Muldoon, a high school librarian from Dallas, Pennsylvania, took her two teenage daughters to the New York rally. She said marching gives people hope.

This year’s action, she said, is set against the backdrop of the Trump presidency, which “turned out to be as scary as we thought it would be.

“I’ve not seen any checks and balances. Everything is moving toward the right, and we have a president who seems to have no decency.”

Milwaukee Women's March - dick by dick — Photo: Raymond Jacquette

Elsewhere, thousands of women gathered in Chicago’s Grant Park, where Fawzia Mirza drew cheers by saying, “When the government shuts down, women still march.”

In Los Angeles, Eva Longoria, Natalie Portman, Viola Davis, Alfre Woodard, Scarlett Johansson, Constance Wu, Adam Scott and Rob Reiner were among the celebrities who addressed a crowd of hundreds of thousands of demonstrators.

In Palm Beach, Florida, home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, several hundred people carried anti-Trump signs. A group of women wearing red cloaks and white hats like the characters in the book and TV series The Handmaid’s Tale marched in formation, their heads bowed.

Members of the group Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women of Seattle burned sage and chanted in front of Seattle’s rainy march.

Demonstrations took place from Shreveport, Louisiana, to Seneca Falls, New York — from Richmond, Virginia to Montpelier, Vermont, to Oklahoma City.