In response to Friday’s presidential inauguration, thousands of North Carolinians dedicated Saturday morning to issues of gender equality. The organizers of the Raleigh Women’s March estimated that tens of thousands of women, men, kids, students, Caucasians, Asians, Blacks, Muslims, Christians, members of the LGBTQ community and more came to Moore Square on the cloudy Saturday morning to stand together and voice their various concerns with the rhetoric of our new president.
There were signs with all sorts of messages. Some were funny, like “If Brittany could make it through 2007, we can make it through this.” Another sign held by a little girl read “Girls just wanna have fun-damental rights.” My personal favorite was “Love is kind of a weird thing to hate” because it really is just that simple. After marching for a bit around Raleigh while saying chants and waving signs, everyone gathered in Moore Square to listen to live music and empowering speeches.
As we stood in the middle of downtown Raleigh expressing our concerns for our future, we didn’t stand alone. There were close to 700 other rallies taking place that same day, as far away as Antarctica. Women’s marches took place in Kenya, New Zealand, Mexico and, of course, all over the States. Many students from around the East Coast, including a ton from NC State, made it up to DC’s rally Saturday morning, which was made up of over 500,000 people. It was a peaceful protest considering the “D.C. police said they had made no march-related arrests,” unlike previous protests. The leaders of the Raleigh rally estimated that at least 3 million people got up and marched for women’s rights that morning.
The rallies were in response to Trump’s presidency overall but people did have a special focus on his rhetoric toward women. One common thread throughout all the protests was an abundance of pink knitted cat hats that people were wearing in retaliation to Trump’s 2005 comments about female genitals. At the Raleigh march, there was one particularly fiery group that called themselves “The Raging Grannies,” all topped with the famous pink hat.
Ingeborg Lykke, a university student from Bergen, Norway, attended the march in London along with thousands of others. When asked about the march’s energy, she said it was “intense, but still cheerful.” Lykke said the overarching theme of the march was that although the most powerful man in the world is a known misogynist, “we won’t ever back down and that is even more powerful than one person and his beliefs.”
Among talking to some of the familiar faces from campus at the Raleigh march, I spoke to Hannah Fritts, a junior studying zoology, who said being with the crowd made her “feel empowered by the other women who were demanding equality.” Fritts believes that there is no point in sitting back when you can have your voice heard, and, along those lines, she would like to see the already “wonderful” Women’s Center at NC State spread more information about its programs to the student body. Being at the rally firsthand made me feel the same way that Fritts described. The rally was something to be proud of for all of those who fight for their rights in a time where their voices seemed ignored.
