“...what was I really marching for?” Scenes from the Women's March on Washington

Mary Schwarzer is a sophomore at Norwell High School who attended the Women’s March on Washington on January 20-21, 2017. This is her first hand account of the experience.

On Friday, January 20th, the day before the Women's March on Washington, I took part in a smaller protest that I happened to stumble upon when walking around our nation's capital. "No Trump! No KKK! No fascist USA! " the crowd chanted, holding up signs and shouting as loud as possible. But what began as a peaceful protest soon spiraled out of control. The leader made the crowd promise to stay on the streets, promise that we would show the president how much we hated him. The energy of the crowd began to feel wrong. My mother and I slowly pulled away from the crowd, watching from a distance. It was then that we noticed police pull up, taking riot gear out of a bus. Fully in armor by the time the protesters arrived, the two groups began to clash. We left the scene entirely. Photograph by Maddie McGlinchey Later that day, I overheard police talking about people throwing rocks. With the power of the Internet, I found out that the protest that we were apart of had resorted to throwing rocks at the officers, sending two to the hospital with minor injuries. That night, rioters dressed all in black tore apart the sidewalks, throwing bricks through glass windows and lighting cars on fire. Alarms were going off all night, and we could hear from our hostel the sounds of tear gas victims, flashbangs, and screaming. It continued until morning, ending in more than 200 arrests. My mother and I were nervous for the Women's March that was to take place the following morning. After all, the people who we had marched with the day before turned to violence, and there were only about 300 of them. How could the predicted 200,000 people be restrained? Why were people so angry as to destroy local businesses, or hurt cops who were only protecting their first amendment right? After all, what was I really marching for? "Trump is a sexist. He does not respect women. He will turn to greed as president," one of our cab drivers stated when I asked him for his opinion on the election. "And Trump also makes racist comments." I asked a man street-vending Trump merchandise on Friday whether he legitimately supported the candidate. "Ma’am," he started, "Do you think I really voted for that man?" "Why are you selling Trump merchandise, then?" He just smiled, like I didn't get it. "I'm making a killing," he replied. "Do you know how much money I make selling these?" At a Mexican restaurant, our waitress said that frequently Trump supporters come to the restaurant and talk about how "those immigrants need to go back to Mexico" as they request that their Hispanic waitress hand-make guacamole for their appetizers. "I obviously don't think that all Trump supporters are bad," the waitress said. "I wouldn't want to judge a whole group of people by a few. But I don't think that some of them understand that the phrase, 'Make America Great Again,' means that half of the country wants to go back to a time where people like me meant less. I feel hurt. I mean, I was born in America and people keep telling me to go back to my country." The thing about talking to these people was that I finally understood that I just did not get it. I travelled to D.C. to march because I was angry about the fact that my president was recorded saying he sexually harassed women, but won the election anyway. That he could treat women like me terribly and get away with it. I felt brushed aside and betrayed by people who would still vote for him regardless of his apparent disrespect for my sex. But I am also a white girl from Norwell. I have had little to no exposure to real-life racism. I do not fear that I will get deported or hated or stigmatized under a Trump presidency, because I am simply not the victim. A lot of the people I talked to feel like Trump is standing for a set of ideas that is causing suspicion and division among the people, and that they will be harmed because of it. People from both sides of the political compass feel misunderstood, and we are refusing to listen to one another. 600,000 people showed up to the Women's March Saturday morning. Barely able to move and completely unable to see the speeches given by the organizers, I scurried up a tree. I gasped when I was finally up, for everywhere I looked, shades of pink hats the protesters wore stretched as far as I could see; chanting as one body and one voice, diverse and yet united. "...but if we commit to what aligns us, if we stand together steadfast and determined, then we stand a chance of saving the soul of our country." The crowd listening to the speakers erupted. A man below the branch I was sitting on held up a sign that read, "Not in MY locker room." Actually, about a quarter of the marchers were male, chanting, "Her body, her choice," over and over. It was lovely to hear, and I felt listened to. After the rally, we all marched for the White House. Technically, we were supposed to stop a distance in front of it because Trump signed off waivers to block the march from going to several checkpoints on our initial route. But when 400,000 more people showed up than predicted, all the marchers proceeded past the White House. I marched behind a black man with a sign that read, "White Lives Matter Too Much." Soon that man started a chant of his own composition. "Everywhere we go!" He shouted. The people around him called back. "The people want to know!" Again, we repeated his verse. "...Who we are. And so we tell them: We are the women!" A crowd a block away heard his song because our chants were so loud, and they started repeating it, too, overlapping with his voice and ours. "The nasty, nasty women! We are the black people!" It was like an echo, all groups copying one another so that we did not know where the song began and ended, looping around and overlapping with more than half a million voices. "...We are the brown people! We are the queer people! We are the Muslims!" And for a few wonderful moments, the massive crowd sang after him with such a strong voice that the man stopped for a moment, amazed that his voice was being heard and repeated. "We are marching for liberty!" The last line echoed through the marchers, and the song began again. It was beautiful, but I know I will never fully understand what I saw. And it is okay that I don't understand, but I need to recognize the pain of other people if I really want to make a difference. That day, no one was arrested. We marched peacefully, caused no damage, and eventually dispersed. But as I was walking back to the hostel for the night, I realized that I had really marched for a voice, even if I had marched for one I hadn't been hearing. I marched for unity and equality and liberty; even if I didn't fully understand it. The streets were quiet that night.