The Women’s March Is Back — But Many Of Its Original Organizers Won’t Be

The Women’s March has lost its luster.

The day after Donald Trump was sworn in for the first time, more than a million people took to the streets in one of the largest single-day protests in American history. It was a show of force and a rejection of what many felt was brazen toxic masculinity ascending to the Oval Office and the women-led protests came to define the early portion of Trump’s first days in office. But with his second inauguration in two days, this year’s demonstration is shaping up to be a diminished shadow of its former self.

The smaller, quieter march is a reflection of the muted exasperation and a likely symptom of political fatigue that has settled in among anti-Trump forces that were once the driving force of American politics. Democrats are wondering how to reassemble a winning coalition that was once organized around opposition, with many pondering if they should just find a way to work with the figure they once called a threat to democracy itself.

“The time to express outrage in that way has passed,” said Vanessa Wruble, who was one of the original organizers of the 2017 protest. She doesn't plan to march this year, and spoke to POLITICO from the animal sanctuary she now operates in Joshua Tree, California, where a double yellow-headed Amazon parrot named Hot Pants squawked in the background.

When asked why she’s forgoing protesting this time around, Wruble said she's "not that type of progressive anymore” frustrated at what she views as a political left that is “completely cannibalizing itself.”

Organizers for the marquee Women’s March in Washington secured a permit for a crowd up to 50,000 people, though few expect Saturday's protest to draw even that many — especially with temperatures plunging over the weekend and some local residents opting to skip town for the federal holiday. The crowds will be far short of the more than 1 million people who protested Trump's inauguration across the country eight years ago.

Aside from the crowds, the mission of the march has shifted, too. While it still bills itself as a feminist-led organization, it rebranded the planned demonstration The People’s March. They are hoping that the 350 marches across the nation act as a “trigger event” to reignite a measure of political activism that’s waned in the weeks since Trump’s election.

Tamika Middleton, the current managing director of the Women’s March, understands how many progressive activists are feeling distraught at this moment in American politics.

“I think that's a thing that is important, to visibilize the dissent,” she said, hoping the march will reignite the left’s tried and true tactic, with roots in the civil rights movements, to gear up for what is in store for the next four years.

Middleton has been with the organization since 2021, joining the group years after it became engulfed in infighting, including some of the original organizers pushed out over accusations that they tolerated antisemitic views and refused to disavow ties to Louis Farrakhan, the controversial leader of the Nation of Islam.

Legal woes also beset the organization, with some in the leadership moving to trademark the name Women’s March, sparking fears local chapters would be forced to pay fees to organize under its banner along with allegations of financial mismanagement.

That troubled history, coupled with acknowledgment that many activists are taking a break from politics after Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to Trump, are dual challenges Middleton said are facing organizers this time around.

“When we lose [typically] people get really riled up, because now they are ready for the fight,” she said, adding that “this has been a really interesting dynamic” in that some people are electing to protest by tuning out politics altogether.

But organizers know they can’t allow Trump to enact policies with no grassroots resistance, even if it's with far less ground support.

“I think a lot of people are somewhat tired, maybe a little bit demoralized,” said Krista Suh, a co-founder of the Pussyhat Project that visually punctuated the 2017 marches with knitted pink hats with pointed ears.

Suh, an Hollywood screenwriter and activist, was drawn to activism following Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 — one that happened even after footage surfaced of him making lewd comments about groping women on the Access Hollywood tape. (Trump denied that he acted this way and that it was "locker room talk.")

She does not see a groundswell of anti-Trump energy ahead of his second term and doesn't plan to march herself. “When he was first elected, I think the shock of it was so galvanizing. I think him being elected a second time … it’s just like a different zeitgeist.”

In conversations with more than a dozen Democratic officials and progressive activists, the muted response to the march appears to be a ripple effect from the frustration many feel about the direction of the party. Trump returns to Washington with a governing trifecta and the conservative bent of the Supreme Court has imploded whatever energy remained on the political left to mount resistance.

It’s also taking place as the party is at a crossroads. President Joe Biden exits office with an abysmal approval rating. There’s no consensus on who will lead the Democratic National Committee, which will pick a new leader in two weeks. And among those looking to lead the party, none appear able to articulate the cause for why they got trounced in last year's election.

“We have to have a very real awakening," said Alencia Johnson, a political commentator who worked on Biden’s 2020 campaign. "Some of the frustrations that we have [are] with privilege and old guards.”

It’s present in the activist movement too, says Wruble, the co-founder of the original Women’s March. She said she was pushed out by the same group of leaders who met the same fate over their antisemitic views. She went on to start March On, which had a similar mission to the Women’s March.

She draws parallels between the “bifurcation” at the Women’s March to what she sees happening with the political left overall.

“We 100 percent lost the information war, and we have been completely splintered," she said. She went on to blame the conservative media that has "pitted [us] against one another, and everyone is just falling for it.”

The organizers of this year's march know trying to build back a movement that had so much promise, will not be an easy task. Middleton acknowledges there is no expectation to match the magnitude of the original Women’s March adding, “How do you capture lightning in a bottle twice?”