The Women's March is reborn before Trump's inauguration and progressives reorganize

One of the most powerful moments in Elisabeth Bramble’s life was when she and her sister stepped off the Washington Metro to join the huge crowd at the 2017 Women’s March.

On Saturday, at 2 a.m., she will board a bus full of North Carolinians on the way to the nation’s capital to participate in the Women’s March, which is repeated before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump but with a new name: People’s March.

“We march once again for our daughters and our granddaughters,” Bramble said. “We march for our migrant community. “We march for our LGBTQ community.”

Organizers say the renamed and reorganized march has absorbed criticism and left behind the internal tumult that consumed the movement after the wildly successful march eight years ago, the day after Trump’s first inauguration.

Now, with Democratic political leaders across the country looking for ways to reconnect with voters after the party’s devastating election losses last fall, People’s March organizers hope to broaden their base, set a new direction and move beyond of a single day of action to help progressive voters find a political home.

Saturday’s march is expected to draw about 50,000 people, far fewer than the Women’s March in 2017. It is one of several protests, demonstrations and vigils focused on abortion rights, migrant rights and the war between Israel and Hamas planned before Monday’s inauguration.

The People’s March will focus on a broader set of goals around women’s and reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, immigration, climate and democracy, rather than focusing solely on Trump, as the Women’s March did before of her first inauguration, said Tamika Middleton, managing director of the Women’s March. Under the new protest name, the group is also trying to broaden support and reflect the priorities of a broader coalition of organizations.

“We recognize the need to have a really broad coalition that is bringing people in,” Middleton explained. “We ask ourselves how to build a broad space that allows for the kind of multiracial, multi-class, multi-gender mass movement that can make a political difference in the years to come.”

The Women’s March was launched in 2017 as a grassroots group of women outraged by Trump’s 2016 presidential victory. The rally drew more than 500,000 people in Washington and millions more in cities across the country, representing a of the largest single-day protests in US history.

Photos of women wearing pink hats and carrying megaphones shouting calls for public action became the enduring image of the inauguration march. But this year, organizers and political analysts have recounted a more somber moment of reflection following Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat. Middleton acknowledged that burnout has taken its toll on many progressives.

The run-up to the inauguration in 2017 was a time of “anger, frustration, disbelief that someone who was so intentional about challenging our political norms and denigrating women, non-white people and migrants could be elected,” said Basil Smikle, political strategist and professor at the school of professional studies at Columbia University.

“And that disbelief manifested itself in more frontal resistance like the Women’s March,” she said.

This year is a quieter time of introspection and building support for the communities that will be most affected by Trump’s policies, so lower attendance at protests makes sense, he explained.

“People are tired,” Smikle observed. “This resistance has lasted eight years, and there is a feeling that things have not improved.”

The general malaise on the left is being felt across the country as Democrats and progressives enter a period of political soul searching after Trump’s decisive victory and Republicans gaining control of Congress.

A post-election dip in enthusiasm for politics and government has led about two-thirds of adults in the United States to say they have recently felt the need to limit their consumption of both topics in the media because they felt overwhelmed, so according to a December poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. According to the survey, this decline is most pronounced among Democrats, but is also reflected among Republicans.

Democrats are also less likely than Americans overall to feel “happy” or “hopeful” about 2025, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in December. Instead, about 4 in 10 Democrats said “stressed” described their feelings extremely well or very well, while about a third of Democrats said the same about “sad.”

Middleton explained that recreating the numbers from the 2017 march is not the goal. Instead, it is to energize voters and attract new members to the movement after what he called a brutal 2020 election season.

“We need to keep attracting new people to make a movement sustainable and to relieve some of the pressure on those who need to rest,” he said.

In the years after 2017, the Women’s March fractured internally as the group faced accusations of racism and anti-Semitism. It also came under scrutiny for being more focused on the voices of straight white women over those of non-white women and the LGBTQ+ community, a gap that caused sponsors to withdraw their support and leadership to change.

Raquel Willis, a transgender activist and co-founder of the Gender Liberation Movement, was anxious before speaking at the 2017 march because she “knew the history of trans exclusion within feminist movements.”

“There was a particular focus on white women and their concerns,” she noted. “And there was limited discussion about white supremacy, capitalism, queerphobia and transphobia.”

Since then, the Women’s March has become a “key collaborator” with her group. The activist said she will return this year as a speaker and has seen the organization go through a “leadership transformation.”

“The Women’s March is in a different era and deserves a chance to show us what its expanded vision is,” she said.

Looking ahead to the 2026 midterm elections, organizers said one of the goals of the People’s March is to help participants find a political home. The march will include topics around feminism, racial justice, anti-militarization and other issues, and will end with discussions moderated by various social justice organizations.

Before their seven-hour bus ride to Washington, Bramble and other members of the group Guilford County Women Dems and Friends gathered at a bar in High Point, North Carolina, this week to distribute vests and prepare posters. The group launched a GoFundMe to offset the costs and offer seats on the bus to students.

“We are going to meet people, establish contacts and collect ideas on how we can energize the local area,” he explained. “Once the march is over, we will not stop.”

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Fernando reported from Chicago.

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