As Trump takes over, protests erupt around the world
21 Jan 2017
Thousands have begun converging for today's Women's March on Washington against the Trump presidency, which organisers expect will take its place among historic marches that led to movements - including the 1963 civil rights demonstrations and the Vietnam War protests of 1967.
The estimated 200,000 people planning to crowd the streets of the nation's capital a day after Donald Trump's inauguration as the 45th president aren't organized by a single group. They're coming on their own - aboard buses and trains from locations as distant as Colorado's Rocky Mountains - after a woman in Hawaii created a Facebook page following November's election, report USA Today and other media.
''We will witness one of the largest and most significant demonstrations for social justice in America's 240-year history,'' said Crystal Hoyt, an associate dean at the University of Richmond who focuses on women and minority leaders. ''By stoking and exploiting fear, Trump mobilized deep-seated sexism, racism, and xenophobia to gain political traction,'' she told USA Today.
Protesters as far away as Australia and New Zealand joined the first of hundreds of women's marches organised around the world in a show of disapproval of US President Donald Trump as he began his first day in office.
In Sydney, Australia's biggest city, about 3,000 people - men and women gathered for a rally in Hyde Park before marching on the US consulate downtown, while organisers said 5,000 people rallied in Melbourne.
In New Zealand, there were marches in four cities, involving around 2,000 people.
Elsewhere in Asia, hundreds of people joined protests in Tokyo, including many American expatriates.
And in Manila on Friday, about 200 demonstrators from a Philippine nationalist group rallied for about an hour outside the US embassy against Trump. Some held up signs demanding US troops leave the Philippines while others set fire to a paper US flag bearing a picture of Trump's face.
According to the US event website Eventbrite, roughly 875,000 people plan to participate in more than 350 marches and rallies this weekend around the country. The largest is expected to be the main DC march.
By comparison, 200,000 people attended the March on Washington in 1963. A 1967 march on the Pentagon protesting Vietnam drew 100,000.
Friday night, a packed 56-passenger bus departed from Louisville, Ky, ferrying women ranging in age from 7 to 80 years old.
What's unique is the march's global reach, with at least 673 ''sister marches'' planned in locales as far away as Hawaii and California domestically and from New Zealand to Belarus, Ghana and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. With the fortunes of so many nations, particularly in the Western world, tied to the US, it's become an international event.
The march is about more than a single day of protest. A number of groups, including Emily's List and Planned Parenthood, are holding workshops the following day designed to enlist women for more civic participation back home, including running for office.
