On Saturday morning an interfaith prayer service was scheduled at the National Cathedral at 10 a.m. In London, around 30,000 people have confirmed attendance to the march, the real number expected to be much higher.
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The protest was just streets away from the White House as the group screamed out to rebel against Mr Trump’s looming presidency.
“I think it will be really interesting for a lot of us who are first-time voters, to be able to go down to Washington, D.C. and see what is going to be very historic and something that we did not think would happen”, said Safi, president of the Pitt College Republicans.
A polarized country, which in many ways can be separated by how one views Trump, sets the backdrop for the incoming president’s inaugural speech.
“Together, we will make America strong again”, Trump said.
Never mind about Trump’s gilded private plane: He made his Washington entrance on a Boeing 757 that is part of the fleet of military planes that become Air Force One whenever the president is aboard. “As a queer, black, cis female, I’m anxious that Trump normalises unacceptable behaviour”.
“Whether they were good or bad is up to your opinion – but we’ve given them all a chance, and we all have given them a chance to lead – and I think we need to do the same to the 45th president as well”.
It was unclear how many people were arrested in the most violent of a series of demonstrations held across the nation’s capital.
However, Kennedy (sophomore-international politics) said she believes she was deprived of a peaceful transition.
Another group of about 150 protesters dressed in black, some of whom wore masks, marched through the city, smashing shop windows and vehicle windows and rolling garbage cans and newspaper vending boxes into the street to form barriers. Kimberly Tyler-Shafiq, 41, from Texas, lives in Surrey and works in HR.
Hundreds of protesters appeared to have gained access to the public viewing areas on the Mall, many chanting “not my president” and holding signs with slogans including “Can we impeach him today?” and ” Fascist “.
“I kept seeing all of the things that he was doing and I kept saying, ‘this will be the thing, ‘” she said of his controversial behavior before the election. “And I’ve come to let you know that artists will continue to speak truth to power, we will continue to sing truth to power, we will write truth to power, we will act truth to power”. “I started looking for groups on Facebook and found the Stand Up To Racism rally“. She’s founded a group of LGBT veterans. “If it’s not successful, then in four years he’ll be gone”. “Don’t give up. I won’t give up”, he said. “But we can’t pick and choose what we want to enforce”. “We ran to a pizza shop and taped his head back on”. I march because some women can’t.
Today, we’ll find out whether they hit the mark. Similar marches are expected in other cities in the USA and in some Canadian cities. “To see all the hard work paid off, it’s hard to grasp”. “Women are like a sleeping giant”, she tells me passionately.
“To all Americans in every city near and far, small and large from mountain to mountain, from ocean to ocean, hear these words: You will never be ignored again”, he said. We thought: what better way to show them that democracy is an active process than organising our own march?
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Among his pledges for day one: sign orders to speed deportations of convicted criminals, begin building a wall on the US-Mexico border, and cancel billions of dollars in US funding to United Nations climate change programmes.
