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Women’s March 2018: Hundreds of Thousands Take to Streets to Protest Trump

HeadlineJan 22, 2018

Hundreds of thousands of women took to the streets across the country on Saturday to mark the first anniversary of last year’s historic Women’s March protesting President Trump’s inauguration. In New York City, 200,000 people took to the streets. Among them was Desiree Jordan, who was protesting violence against queer women of color.

Desiree Jordan: “We’re here basically to say the names of the black women, the black lesbians, that were murdered recently, and there’s been no media coverage, particularly women that are silenced. I mean, it’s horrific not to hear these women’s names mentioned. We all know Trayvon Martin. We all know all the men—Eric Garner—that was murdered. We need to know the names of the women and the lesbians, black lesbians particularly, who are murdered in this country, and there is nothing in our media. And it’s just horrific to think about women being killed just for being who they are.”

Saturday’s march comes amid the nationwide #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, in which women across industries and class and racial lines have joined their voices to denounce pervasive gender-based violence and to demand an end to sexual harassment and abuse. In Los Angeles, tens of thousands of women protested, including Academy Award-winning actress Viola Davis.

Viola Davis: “Listen. I am always introduced as an award-winning actor. But my testimony is one of poverty. My testimony is one of being sexually assaulted and very much seeing a childhood that was robbed from me. And I know that every single day, when I think of that, I know that the trauma of those events are still with me today. And that’s what drives me to the voting booth. That’s what allows me to listen to the women who are still in silence.”

That’s Academy Award-winning actress Viola Davis. At a Women’s March rally in Morristown, New Jersey, on Saturday, the new first lady of New Jersey, Tammy Murphy, said she was a survivor of an attempted sexual assault while she was a sophomore in college. In total, there were protests in hundreds of cities across the United States and around the world, including in Frankfurt, Germany; Kampala, Uganda; and Osaka, Japan. We’ll hear more voices from the Women’s March in Park City, Utah, after headlines.

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