Photos: 500,000 Women (and Men) March Against Donald Trump in New York, Jan. 21, 2017
23.1.17
See my photos on Flickr here!
Please also consider supporting my work! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues – including the threats posed by Donald Trump and his administration – over the next two months.
After the shock of Donald Trump’s inauguration day, when millions of Americans (and visiting foreigners like me) felt understandably distraught, bereft, dismayed, as the grotesque, narcissistic, predatory, corrupt fraud that is Donald Trump delivered a bleak and graceless inauguration speech, it was nothing short of a delight on Saturday, Jan. 21, Day 2 of the aberrant Trump presidency, when, across the country and around the world, millions of women (plus large numbers of supportive men) marched in protest against Trump and all he and his administration stand for— his disdain for women, his racism, his xenophobia, his adherence to intolerant white Christian fundamentalism, and, last but not least, his opaque, but very obviously corrupt business practices. Two US academics have estimated that between 3.3m and 4.6m people marched in total across the US, with New York’s turnout estimated at between 400,000 and 500,000 people.
Stepping out of Grand Central Station into a river of protest, with more clever, witty and insightful handmade posters than you could imagine, and with chants and cheers punctuating the general hubbub at regular intervals was to feel that perhaps this dystopian vision of America can indeed be overthrown before it wreaks untold havoc at home and abroad. And with no beginning or end of the protest in sight, it was easy to believe that the number marching was much larger than even the academics’ estimate.
It will take more than one day, of course, as the people of America need to unite like never before — everyone who didn’t vote for Trump, everyone threatened by Trump, everyone appalled by Trump, including, of course, those who voted for him but might already be having second thoughts. This could be a disastrous presidency, or it could be even worse than that, but people need to put aside any notions of complacency, and work out how to resist. This was a great start, and a historic moment that everyone there will remember, but now there needs to be much more action and organizing.
People also need to abandon any fanciful notions that the Democratic Party is going to rise to the rescue. Outnumbered in Congress, the Democrats primarily need to work out who they are and who they represent before indulging in any more efforts to present themselves as being the voice of the people. As the election showed, the Democrats lost many voters — with some turning to Trump instead — after eight years of President Obama, and after Hillary Clinton’s campaign, because they correctly perceived that the Democrats are in bed with Wall Street and big business, that they also back America’s disastrous ongoing military engagements, and that they care little about ordinary hard-working men and women of America, despite claiming that they do.
The fact that those turning to Trump will undoubtedly be disappointed with their choice, unless they fall prey to the Trump camp’s relentlessly aggressive efforts to always blame someone else for everything, and to lie as much as possible, while claiming not to, ought not to benefit Democrats until they decide whether they are for the vested interests that Trump so cynically attacked (despite evidently being part of the problem himself) or whether they, and not Trump, can claim to act for the people. If they cannot, then Trump’s election shows that the people need a whole new political movement to represent them.
For now, however, as I leave you to ponder on how resistance might best be achieved, and to hope that you will recognize that doing nothing is not an option, I leave you with these photos of a day of hope across the US and around the world, when ordinary people demonstrated that fundamental decency will not be silenced, and that a tolerant, multi-racial society, featuring, at its heart, equality between women and men, and between people whatever their race, creed or color, has humor, intelligence and compassion that throw into even sharper relief how troublingly miserable, negative and ungenerous Donald Trump and his advisors are.
Also see the photo set here:
Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose debut album ‘Love and War’ and EP ‘Fighting Injustice’ are available here to download or on CD via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).
To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and The Complete Guantánamo Files, an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.
Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
23 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
Here’s my latest article, linking to my photo set on Flickr of 25 photos from the powerful and exhilarating Women’s March against Donald Trump in New York on Saturday, after the bleak and depressing inauguration the day before (and just before I came home to the UK). This was a great antidote to the grim reality of Trump becoming president, and it clearly put the administration on the defensive, so they’re already looking weak and vindictive, but we’re going to need to fight relentlessly to – as I hope – make Trump the shortest-serving president in US history, as he deserves to be.
...on January 24th, 2017 at 12:05 am
Andy Worthington says...
What a ridiculous first few days it’s been for the credibility of the Trump administration. On CNN, as I was leaving the US on Saturday night, Anderson Cooper was incredulously asking how a new government could spend its first full day in office obsessed with lying about attendance at the inauguration. That whole show is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCN7O0EGq4M
...on January 24th, 2017 at 8:04 am
Andy Worthington says...
Then there’s the declaration of inauguration day (Jan. 20) as a ‘National Day of Patriotic Devotion.’ The Guardian notes the comparisons with North Korea: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/24/trump-national-day-of-patriotic-devotion-echoes-north-korea
...on January 24th, 2017 at 8:04 am
Andy Worthington says...
And there’s the CIA fiasco. Trump seems to have visited the CIA and planted his own people in the audience, as well as spending time, as CNN put it, “focusing on the size of the crowd at his inauguration, his appearance on magazine covers and saying he ‘has a running war with the media.'”
See: http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/21/politics/trump-to-cia-i-am-so-behind-you/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-cia-meeting-full-support-condemns-media-isis-a7539766.html
...on January 24th, 2017 at 8:05 am
damo says...
Hi andy so sorry about your friend….it was a good turnout here in london on sat 30.000 despite the cold ..well the monster is on …..its…thrown can you believe it i didnt watch the inurgaration i couldnt stomach it though i did catch ….it…swaying to a bad cover of my way…..how original trump is a text book narcissistic sociopath he is deeply mentaly ill and unfit for office and should be removed immeadatly either sectioned indefinately or euythanised he is a monster two days in and he,s destroying everything obama did . Has no understanding of enviromental concerns and has the support of the worst of corperate greed a team of monsters we will wait to see how this plays out when the people who voted him in reolise just like with farage…that they wont be doing jack shit for them.
...on January 25th, 2017 at 8:28 am
damo says...
History is repeating itself …..we have learned nothing..since the end of ww2 …nothing…and we are back in the 1930s with the rise of fascist right monsters trump putin marine le pen the time for sitting on hands is over
...on January 25th, 2017 at 8:36 am
damo says...
Im watching the news….trump needs to be shot asap
...on January 25th, 2017 at 10:11 pm
damo says...
Since gaining power trump has become an out of control monster
...on January 25th, 2017 at 10:53 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Great to hear from you, Damo.
Trump is indeed a monster, but he’s just the front man for the deranged far right wing of the Republican Party. Even if he goes, we’re stuck with them, so a fight is on the cards for four years until the Democrats, hopefully, can figure out how to get elected (hint – it involves paying attention to what Bernie Sanders stood for, and not having anything more to do with the Clintons).
I can’t see that Trump can do anything but become more unpopular, after starting off so unpopular in the first place, but I can’t see it making any difference to his hardcore supporters – as with Farage here, and whichever Tories the Brexit enthusiasts see as their saviours. The notion of a post-truth, post-fact world may have been exaggerated, but many of the enthusiasts for Trump and for Brexit seem to be impervious to rational explanations of why their man isn’t going to drain the swamp, but is a key part of the swamp, and why, for the UK, the EU isn’t the problem.
This is going to be a tiring and infuriating year, I can see. I hope we’re all up for a pretty continuous fight.
...on January 26th, 2017 at 1:22 am
damo says...
Theres no other chouice but to fight or the deranged right wing will gain domminance look what happened 80 odd years ago yes tireing it may well be but the consequences are too dire if we dont
...on January 26th, 2017 at 9:10 am
damo says...
The clintons are poison just like blaire they must be bannished
...on January 26th, 2017 at 9:14 am
Andy Worthington says...
Oh, I absolutely agree, Damo. The fight is everything right now. And how pathetic is it that Theresa May has gone cap in hand to Trump looking for a favourable trade deal (when it’s clear that ‘America First’ Trump can’t wait to stick it to us with as one-sided a deal as possible). I can only wonder what locker room comments Trump and Farage traded about Theresa May when the reptile was the first to meet the orange sh*tbag after his victory in November.
As for the Clintons, yes, consignment to the bin of history is the only way – like Tony Blair, as you note.
...on January 26th, 2017 at 11:17 am
damo says...
There like rats in a sack yes it is utterly repulsive the dim bag lady has slithered over to america to kiss trumps foul arse sniverling and begging for a few crumbs….trump will asset strip this swine of a country and the vile tories will be only to happy to let him they will spin and bullshit saying its a trade deal while the nhs and social services dissapire as has been the case its the poorest and most vulnerable who will suffer…as usual
...on January 26th, 2017 at 1:05 pm
the talking dog says...
I must say that our good friend Mr. Putin certainly could not be happier with developments that leave the US and UK ever more isolated from the global structure that heretofore had kept Russia largely on the sidelines. What better way to overcome the world’s global superpower (and its “special relationship” BFF) than to have them both commit suicide-by-vote! To be fair, it’s more of a “murder-suicide”, but the result is the same.
...on January 26th, 2017 at 2:42 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, Theresa May is planning to sell us all down the river, Damo, so she can press ahead with her beloved Brexit. We are ruled by the worst kind of idiot – those with the strong conviction that they are right, when there is no basis for that presumption. They are deluded, blinded by their own self-obsession, their own tired belief that Britain is somehow exceptional.
...on January 26th, 2017 at 8:47 pm
Andy Worthington says...
It is indeed a strange world we find ourselves in, TD. In the US, it seems that Putin may have had some involvement in securing Trump’s victory, but her win the Uk we apparently have only ourselves to blame for our suicidal ambitions.
At least in the US people are out on the streets. Here there’s nothing. 16 million people silenced by their own media and politicians. What a disaster.
...on January 26th, 2017 at 8:50 pm
damo says...
Theres a great programe on bbc 4 on the lefties ie the st agnes rd squaters in the 70s……..andy how did we go from all that idealisum to were we are now….wot happened
...on January 26th, 2017 at 11:06 pm
damo says...
Quatermass the conclution 1979 is now starting to look very profetic …like they could see were we are going
...on January 26th, 2017 at 11:08 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, I caught that programme too, Damo. Originally broadcast in 2006, there are two more episodes, presumably over the next two weeks, ‘Angry Wimmin’ and ‘A Lot of Balls.’
Part One, from last night, ‘Property Is Theft’ is currently on iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074s62
I suppose the individual battles ended up being a distraction from the big battle.
Certainly, under Thatcher, the repression was pretty relentless. By the time I got to Brixton at the end of 1985, the squatting scene was awash with heroin, and I remember thinking at the time that people were giving up what they’d miss afterwards.
Sure enough, Thatcher waged war on whoever she saw opposing her – the miners, travellers, printers, and really you’d have to include squatting in that assault. She co-opted many critics with her utilities sell-offs and her council house sell-off, and although there was important dissent that lasted into the 90s – the rave scene, the road protest movement, the Poll Tax Riot – she’d set the scene for the ultimate betrayal that came under Blair – to commodify everything, to make everything about money. That’s where the rot really set in.
I don’t know how we change it, but I’m still determined to try! Capitalism is sh*t. It’s dull, myopically materialistic, and an inequality-creating monster that also has no regard for the environment. It is killing us mentally and spiritually and it has to go!
...on January 27th, 2017 at 8:12 am
Andy Worthington says...
I think you’ve mentioned The Quatermass Conclusion before, Damo, but I’ve never seen it.
I can’t find the film online, but the four-part TV series is available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkiHNnudxr8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KfeMIg976A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU5kCRyulJ8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIMODQjgoPE
...on January 27th, 2017 at 8:30 am
damo says...
Please watch the quatermass its space fantasy ….but….they were onto something becouse the storyline is whats happening now …the rot realy did set in ….but…..i pray to any god….people may just may be wakeing up
...on January 27th, 2017 at 12:59 pm
damo says...
Found it its on youtube the whole series …yes its dated it was 1979 but watch it andy and you will begin to see the eerie simmilaritys with wots happening now
...on January 27th, 2017 at 1:17 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I will try to check it out, Damo. One of the many great things about the 70s was how much dystopian culture there was – I’m thinking of Soylent Green and Capricorn One, off the top of my head, and not forgetting Logan’s Run.
...on January 27th, 2017 at 6:25 pm