On Saturday, after former President Donald J. Trump’s re-election dashed progressives’ hopes of a new era for women’s rights and other left-wing causes, Women’s March held a hastily arranged protest-cum-dance party outside the headquarters of a conservative think tank in Washington. Only about 200 people showed up.
The first Women’s March, held in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s 2017 inauguration, drew hundreds of thousands of people to the National Mall in Washington to protest what they feared would be an assault on reproductive rights, immigrants and civil rights under his administration. But this week, Women’s March organizers are grappling with despair among their base that the president they oppose has been elected to a second term, and questions about where the movement is headed.
The goal of the Saturday afternoon event was to reinvigorate the organization’s progressive base after the election and perhaps to unleash some anger at the Heritage Foundation, the think tank that had designed a policy playbook for a second Trump administration, Project 2025, whose goals included aggressively curtailing access to abortion.
“You are not going to take our joy,” said Rachel O’Leary Carmona, the executive director of Women’s March, before singing along to the music.
But while a band and a D.J. played upbeat songs at top volume, the crowd did not do much more than sway to the beat.
By the second song, Kathy, 58, who lives in Washington and declined to give her last name because she works in communications for a nonprofit organization, was comforting the friend she came with, who was in tears.
“I didn’t even want to come down — I was on the metro and I’m like, you know what? This might actually make us feel worse,” Kathy said. “Why bother, especially now? And it’s great that it’s in front of the Heritage Foundation, but it’s Saturday. Ain’t nobody in there.”
The building indeed looked deserted, with only a handful of police officers lounging at the entrance as they monitored the demonstrators. Kathy and her friend left minutes later, unsure if they would come back in January, to a bigger demonstration being planned by Women’s March ahead of Mr. Trump’s second inauguration.
For Ms. O’Leary Carmona, her organization’s objective of working to empower women and to create safer, more inclusive communities has never depended on who is in the White House.
“It’s eight years later: the mood is different, the movement is different,” Ms. O’Leary Carmona said in an interview on Friday. “But the mandate has not changed.”
Women’s March, she said, is focused on re-energizing its base and getting newcomers who are concerned about the re-election of Mr. Trump and threats to women’s reproductive rights mobilized for other progressive causes and organizations.
“We are one of the biggest on-ramps to the left, for people just getting politicized,” Ms. O’Leary Carmona said. “We’re getting our confidence up and starting our comeback tour.”
Women’s March is rebranding its annual event slated for January, ahead of Mr. Trump’s second inauguration. It will be called the People’s March on Washington and will include dozens of other groups and coalitions that organize on the issues of abortion access and reproductive rights, immigration, racial justice and civic engagement. Organizers have little idea at this point how much of a crowd will show up, let alone whether it will rival the overwhelming turnout of the 2017 march, which drew three times the number of people who had attended Mr. Trump’s inauguration the day before.
For some younger women, Saturday’s demonstration was more hopeful. Megan Kovacs, 23, drove from outside Charleston, S.C., to meet her friend Maxine Cuarto, 23, in Charlotte, N.C., so they could go to the demonstration together on Saturday.
“Obviously we voted in the last election as well, but I wasn’t quite old enough to drive up here yet,” Ms. Kovacs said. “Now, to be old enough to have a voice, we’re willing to go as far as we need to go to make that difference and show solidarity.”
For Ms. O’Leary Carmona, that is exactly what the movement is working for. “Part of what drove the loss on Election Day is part of what’s difficult inside the progressive movement — we actually need a compelling vision of the future and a story about that vision that people want to hear.”
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