Updated: Jan. 20, 2025, at 10:58 p.m. 

Thousands of protesters marched to the National Mall Saturday afternoon to denounce President-elect Donald Trump ahead of his inauguration and support causes like reproductive rights, immigration and climate change.

About 5,000 demonstrators from around the country attended the People’s March, sponsored by the national Women’s March organization, to support causes like LGBTQ+ rights, voting freedoms and abortion access. Protesters gathered at 10 a.m. at three “kick off” locations — Farragut Square, McPherson Square and Franklin Park — before marching down I Street and turning onto 17th Street to convene for programming in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

Each of the three locations focused on a set of issues, allowing groups to convene and march together.

Farragut Square composed of groups focused on immigration and climate, like the Democratic Socialists of America and The Rising Majority. About 30 GW students joined GW’s Reproductive Autonomy and Gender Equity Group at the Farragut West location to march together.

Local D.C. groups like the D.C. chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement and Free D.C, an organization fighting for D.C. statehood, met at McPherson Square. Bodily autonomy and gender justice organizations like Women’s March and the Gender Liberation Movement met at the Franklin Park location.

Protesters marched towards the Lincoln Memorial chanting “When I say immigrant you say justice,” “Hey hey, ho ho Donald Trump has got to go,” and “Separate church and state.” Some demonstrators carried signs reading “Power to the people,” while others adorned the pink cat-ear hats popularized during the 2017 Women’s March.

The protest comes eight years after the first Women’s March in January 2017, where more than 500,000 people protested Trump’s first inauguration. The 2017 Women’s March garnered millions of demonstrators angered by the incoming Trump administration at protests held across the country.

Turnout for the People’s March was significantly fewer than organizers expected, with leaders preparing for more than 50,000 attendees.

Protesters arrived at the Lincoln Memorial at around 12:30 p.m. and waited for speakers to take to the stage while upbeat pop music played over a set of speakers at the front of the crowd.

Rachel O’Leary Carmona, the executive director of Women’s March, began the programming at 1 p.m. by addressing the crowd and introducing the series of more than 15 speakers. Speakers from organizations like the Sierra Club, an environmental rights organization, and Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, a D.C.-based organization that provides political and legal defense for Black communities across the District, spoke to the crowd about political and social resistance.

“At the People’s March, we are calling out the people who use power to strip our freedom,” O’Leary Carmona said. “We are calling in ‘we the people,’ and we are calling on all of us to fight.”

Several speakers addressed the crowd from a stage situated on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that looked out over the reflecting pool. Speakers criticized policies from Trump’s first term like the reversal of Roe v. Wade and his decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, an international treaty to stop the progression of climate change.

Ben Jealous, the executive director of the Sierra Club, said Trump “ridiculed” environmental policies like the Green New Deal during his first term. He said the people are powerful enough to keep making progress “no matter who is president.”

“We’ve been around since 1892 and you’re gonna be out of office soon so we’re gonna keep organizing,” Jealous said.

A small crowd of counterprotesters carrying anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ signs stood to the right of the stage opposite a group of protesters who shouted “Pro-life is a lie, they don’t care if people die.” U.S Park Police escorted some of the counterprotesters off of the National Mall before programming began.

Several organizations tabled on the National Mall in partnership with the march, like Ben and Jerry’s, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Free DC and the For Freedoms project at GW’s Corcoran School of Arts and Design.

Eric Gottesman, a visiting professor at Corcoran, said he co-founded the For Freedoms project in 2018. He said the group was inspired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 speech, where he described the four freedoms: speech, worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. Gottesman said he turned the four freedoms into a photography exhibit currently showcased in the atrium of the Corcoran School.

“We also wanted to expand what freedom means, and so over the course of the years, we’ve passed out tens of thousands of these signs all across the country at different events, different universities, schools, museums, communities, to get people’s sense of what freedom means to them,” Gottesman said.

MC Daubendiek, a senior studying fine arts who said she’s in Gottesman’s class, was tabling at the march with the For Freedoms Project and said attendees were “super receptive” to the table, which welcomed them to make a sign of their own.

“It’s brought some joy to people, especially people who didn’t have signs,” Daubendiek said. “It’s a free sign, so why not?”

Brandy Smith, a sophomore who attended the march with GW RAGE, said she heard about the march during her women’s gender studies class. She said she attended because she wants to look back at this time in history when she’s older and say “I was there, I saw it.”

“​​There could be students and people our age who look at this stuff and say, ‘this is silly’ or ‘it’s stupid participating in it’ but we’re here and this is history,” Smith said.

The program concluded with a speech by Angela Davis, who could not attend the march but sent in her words for a People’s March organizer to read to attendees. Davis, an American activist who advocated for the rights of Black prisoners, said the people “cannot be silent” while Trump’s policies make “the rich get richer.”

“Trump may have won the November election, but we’re here to say that we will never, ever be complicit in the kind of fascist programming that he is threatening to put in place,” an organizer said on behalf of Davis.

The crowd began to disperse from the National Mall at around 3 p.m. following Davis’ speech.

This post has been updated to correct the following: 

A prior version of this post referred to MC Daubendiek by the wrong pronouns. The pronouns are now correct. We regret this error.