When Donald Trump surprised the nation with a narrow Electoral College election victory and popular vote loss in 2016, many among the majority of Americans who had voted against him were in a state of shock and despair. Soon a group of women from across the country began organizing what would become the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. The Women’s March as it was called, drew over half a million people to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 21, 2017, the first full day of the Trump presidency to voice opposition to the threat his administration posed to reproductive, civil and human rights. On that same day, more than 3 million people in cities across the country and around the world participated in local protests in a global show of support for the resistance movement.
In the wake of Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory, Women’s March is again organizing a major protest they’re calling the “People’s March,” on Jan. 18 in Washington, D.C. and around the country. The nationwide action will serve as a space for supporters to build community and power, with focus on the risks a second Trump administration will pose to civil liberties, gender rights reproductive rights and health care access.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Tamika Middleton, managing director of Women’s March, who discusses nationwide organizing she and others are doing in advance of the Jan. 18 People’s March in Washington, D.C., and other cities across the U.S.
TAMIKA MIDDLETON: You know, as the impetus behind the first Women’s March, there was really a moment where women at that time saw the role and the importance of coming together to stand up against an incoming Trump presidency and the understanding of the repression that was to come. And so in this time, what we realized is that what we have to be doing is building a big tent and building a movement that has space for more and more people to come in. So really building a mass movement that has space for all of us and for all of our issues, all of our concerns.
And so the shift this time is that we’re building a coalition to plan and organize this mobilization together so that we can have a number of perspectives in issue areas. And so not only will abortion access, of course be one major issue, but also there are organizations inside of the coalition that are looking at immigration rights, that are looking at racial justice, that are looking at economic justice and climate justice.
And so, we’re really trying to build a big umbrella that allows lots of people up into the space and helps them land not only in the political conversation, but inside of political organizations that they can continue to organize inside of even after that mobilization, because we know we’ll have to continue the fight, continue to be active and continue to contend for power over the next four years and beyond.
SCOTT HARRIS: One of the challenges of organizing a second March since the historic 2017 original Women’s March, is that the turnout will always be compared to that enormous outpouring of opposition to Trump, just as he was about to take office in 2017. How are you dealing with that problem? Can you match the numbers? How important is that?
And certainly the media in its jaundiced way will look at whatever numbers if it’s less than what happened in 2017, as somehow chalking it up to a failure. Those are really tough things for you as an organizer to deal with. Maybe you could just comment on some of your thoughts of all that.
TAMIKA MIDDLETON: Absolutely. I think it would be an unrealistic bar for us to try to every time we turn people out to try to meet that level, to reach the sort of massive spontaneous outpouring that happened in 2017. And so we are not unrealistic. But we are strategic.
And we’re thinking about this not as a matter of how many people we turn out on a day, but rather how many people we bring in and then land in organizations that can continue to organize. And so what we’re focusing on this time, of course, we’re focusing on turnout, but we’re focusing on just as much is how we build out the infrastructure for people to be absorbed into organizations through this mobilization.
And that’s really been our focus. That is what is most important to us. But also the thing I want to note as well is that what we are seeing, even as we are very, you know, early in the recruitment in the conversation around this mobilization, is that there is a lot of energy around mobilizing, mobilizing in people’s local communities.
And so while, you know, we’ve not done much promotion of this mobilization, what we have seen is that we have more than 60,000 people already signed up to mobilize in their local communities and in their cities and states. And so, while, you know, we are not anticipating that we will in D.C. be able to to reach that number and we’re not holding that metric as a metric of success, what we are recognizing is that more people want to get involved and are prepared to get involved where they are and where, and we’re trying to ensure that we can help those folks find the organizations in their communities that they can plug into.
And so that even when we leave Jan. 18, when we get to Jan. 20, when we get to, you know, next November, that people are still engaged and still involved and that we don’t lose the momentum and the energy that was being built at this time.
And the exhaustion I know is so real, like I feel it in my own body. You know, after two decades-plus of organizing, you know, the exact same exhaustion absolutely settled in. And that is part of why, for us the mobilization is important because it does provide a place for new people with new energy who are just being activated to come into the movement to begin to build their leadership so that we can offer some relief and some respite for folks who have been in the movement for the long haul.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Tamika Middleton (17:02) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.
For the best listening experience and to never miss an episode, subscribe to Between The Lines on your favorite podcast app or platform.
Or subscribe to our Between The Lines and Counterpoint Weekly Summary.
