On Saturday, Jan. 21, a sea of pink lined the streets of Washington D.C.
Various signs referencing women’s, LGBTQ and immigrant rights among other political topics were held by protesters and later left on sidewalks, creating a statement by hundreds of thousands of American people — we want to be heard.
After a long and controversial campaign and election, on Friday Jan. 20 Donald Trump was officially inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States.
Less than 24 hours after he took his seat in the Oval Office, hundreds of thousands of Americans gathered to voice their concerns with the new administration. The Women’s March on Washington was planned for Saturday, along with similar marches executed around the U.S. and globe.
Several University students made the trip to the city to have their voices heard.
Mass communication senior Kimberly Gagnet organized and led a group of students to the march. On Tuesday before the Inauguration, she expected 200,000 people to show up in Washington, D.C. on Saturday for the Women’s March in what was becoming a global movement to advocate for women’s rights.
Four days later, she and several other students stood among over 500,000 protestors in the National Mall shouting, “We will not go away. Welcome to your first day.”
As soon as Gagnet learned about the march, she says she knew she had to find a way to get there.
“I wanted to go, but I needed people to drive with me. No one I knew was available,” she explains. “This semester I just got a new roommate and before we even met in person I was like, ‘Hey do you want to travel 15 hours across the country with me,’ and she was like, ‘Um, yes,’ So we’re basically best friends now.”
In a time span of only a few weeks, working with the Women’s March Organization as a college liaison along with English and theatre freshman Carson Richman, Gagnet rallied a group of 15 University students to travel to the nation’s capital city for Jan. 21.
Gagnet worked with locals who supported the cause to get the students’ trips entirely funded.
Marchers described the experience as a whirlwind — a sea of people intensely claustrophobic in the best way, with the powerful voices of the rally’s motivational speakers echoing for miles.
“It was just really powerful,” Gagnet says. “There was no way to be ready for that kind of raw energy.”
Over two million people showed up to sister marches in cities spread all over the world in every continent, from New Orleans to Sidney, Australia.
“We had like 2.9 million people show up to marches. That’s historic. What’s most important though is that we were all able to come together and be inspired, be motivated,” anthropology junior Molly Jones says after attending the march.
The Women’s March itself stated no singular platform for the protest beforehand and has faced some criticism for this approach. However, Gagnet feels as though this strategy is exactly what allowed the march to be so representative of all marginalized peoples and inclusive overall.
“People were able to represent what they thought was important,” Gagnet explains. “That is why I think it ended up being so large and so important. It was very open.”
People from every walk of life were represented through those who marched or signs photographed during the march: members of the LGBTQ community, groups of minority, elderly, disabled and young people, men and many, many women.
“It was such a special thing to witness and experience women so much older and wiser than I fighting for my generation’s future,” Wildlife ecology freshman Brooke Tassin says about her experience marching.
Recent hotly contested issues came to the forefront of the march, like reproductive rights, marriage equality, and immigration, along with, other current concerns such as mass incarceration, treatment of minority groups and the environment.
Mathematics junior Kiet Truong says he attended the march because he finds it “appalling” that the country is still debating women’s rights.
“This is something that I really believe in and I had a chance to do something about it,” he says. “I really believe in thinking about the person I want to be and just trying to take steps to do that. And the person I want to be would go march. So I did.”
Returning home, many of the marchers agreed they feel the disheartenment of coming down from the high of activism, especially living in such a conservative state.
“Some people are calling this a revolution of love,” Jones says. “We need to love each other and not yell at each other and just listen. But it’s hard. People are so combative and defensive. Really I think that we’ll reach solutions when we can actually talk about things and bridge the gap between different points of [view].”
The group is already planning to take more steps to addressing issues of equality and women’s rights here in Baton Rouge, starting with contacting local representatives and ending with encouraging activism in Baton Rouge and at LSU.
“I hope that we can make some changes, and hopefully that this was a big wake-up call to all the people who have just been complacent and lukewarm and uninvolved,” Jones says. “There’s just not room for that any more. We can’t just watch from afar. We have to take part. This is where we begin.”
Gagnet says she even found herself having a “Leslie Knope moment” during Michael Moore’s speech on potentially running for office in the future.
“I am now considering working on some local campaigns—working with local democrats…,” she says. “I would like to see if it is something I would maybe one day like to be part of. I have never thought of doing anything in politics before, but there is so much to be done in Louisiana.”
While Truong wasn’t totally confident their concerns had been truly heard, he still thought it was a uniting event that made a statement for the U.S. and women around the world.
“I feel like even if nothing politically productive comes out of this, it was still a cathartic thing for everyone to go and be unified in that way,” he says. “The march was in 32 countries. They are all with us, fighting for this vision of an America and a world where women are treated equally and have equal rights.”
Mass communication senior Kimberly Gagnet protested Saturday, Jan. 21 during the Women's March on Washington.
