Fueled by rage and anxiety following the first inauguration of President Donald Trump, the magnitude of the Women’s Marches of 2017 caught the nation by surprise, marking what was widely believed to be the largest single-day protest event in American history at the time. In Chicago, roughly a quarter-million demonstrators flooded the downtown area, shutting down sections of the Loop. A sea of protesters, many donning the event’s iconic pink knitted “pussy hats,” hoisted signs and chanted “No Trump. No KKK. No fascist USA” as they spilled out of Grant Park. The Chicago rally was held in concert with the Women’s March on Washington and similar protests in cities across the globe, where millions took to the streets to challenge Trump’s agenda on his first full day in office. The Women’s March turned into an annual event, embracing themes of gender equality, bodily autonomy and preservation of civil rights. But a few years later, discord and accusations of antisemitism plagued the national Women’s March leadership, spurring the resignation of several board members and some fracturing within the broader grassroots movement. Now, ahead of a second Trump presidency, national Women’s March organizers have rebranded their annual January event as “The People’s March,” which includes a coalition of dozens of organizations focused on reproductive rights, racial justice, immigration, environmental conservation and other issues. The marches are scheduled on Saturday — two days before Trump’s second inauguration — in Washington, D.C., and hundreds of other cities, including multiple local events. But it remains to be seen if the protests can come anywhere close to reviving the fervor, support and united front that defined the initial Women’s Marches. The demonstrations and events this weekend will provide an early glimpse at what a potential Trump resistance effort might look like as the Republican president-elect returns to the White House — threatening mass deportations, rollbacks of health care initiatives, a reprisal of the so-called “Muslim travel ban” from his first administration and a flurry of other pledges that have alarmed progressives. So far, People’s March events for the Chicago area seem to be getting off to a chaotic start. A protest dubbed “People’s March Chicagoland: Unite Against Fascism” was listed on The People’s March website in late December and early January, with more than 900 RSVPs but no confirmed location. Then about a week before the event, the location was abruptly changed to Springfield — about 200 miles south of Chicago — and the demonstration was renamed “Illinois United Against Tyranny.” Event organizers for “People’s March Chicagoland: Unite Against Fascism” did not return Tribune emails or calls for comment after the location was changed. Shortly after, that event was removed completely from the People’s March website. As of three days before the event, there was no People’s March protest or rally listed in the downtown Chicago area for Saturday, though other local People’s March demonstrations were scheduled in northwest suburban Arlington Heights, Rockford, DeKalb County and Kankakee. A People’s March demonstration called “Suburban March for Justice Suburbs of Chicago” was planned for the city’s Southwest Side near suburban Evergreen Park. There was also a variety of virtual events. Another People’s March rally had been scheduled for Kane County but was canceled about 10 days before the event, according to an organizer. The People’s March website listed two other events called “Chicago Protest & People’s March for Justice to Stop the Trump Agenda,” protests to be held two days later on Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration. Although the marches target the incoming president, a recent news release about the event also harshly criticized President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama, both Democrats. People’s March for Justice listed two central demands: “Stop the genocide in Palestine” and “No deportations,” according to the website. “We demand an end to all US aid to Israel and no deportations or raids in immigrant communities,” an event description on Instagram stated. National Women’s March organizers say the movement “will look very different in 2025 and beyond,” compared with the earlier marches and rallies that rocked the start of Trump’s first term. The People’s March “is not a Women’s March — Women’s March as an organization is just one of the members who is involved,” stressed Tamika Middleton, managing director of Women’s March. She cited several major world changes that have transpired and reshaped the political landscape over the past eight years, from the COVID-19 global pandemic to multiple election cycles to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that established the right to an abortion nationwide for nearly a half-century. “We’re in a new era of American politics. There is no comparing the response in 2017 to today,” Middleton said. “We are in a whole new world, and we are acting accordingly. This year, we will see a revival of an emphasis on community. … People are hungry to take action in their own communities and connect with others in 2025.” ‘Uphill battle’ The results of the November presidential election devastated Andrea Bill, a mom of three from Morris who planned to travel roughly two hours round trip to attend “People’s March Chicagoland: Unite Against Fascism” in Chicago on Saturday. When the march was moved to Springfield, she thought about starting her own protest. Then she found out about “Suburban March for Justice Suburbs of Chicago” and decided to protest there on Saturday instead, she said. Bill said she didn’t attend the first few Women’s Marches because she had young children at the time and protesting was difficult. She noted many people are grappling with jobs, housing, child care and health care, basic aspects of life she believes will only become more challenging under a second Trump administration. “And I feel like that’s why a lot of people aren’t as involved in politics,” she said. “Because it’s just so hard to make it through your own life that taking on the extra stresses of what’s happening politically isn’t at the top of people’s checklists.” Many people tell her demonstrations and rallies won’t accomplish anything tangible. “But this is the little bit of power we do have as regular citizens,” Bill said. “We can come together collectively and let our issues be known. It’s really one of the only tools we do have.” Suburban March for Justice Suburbs of Chicago organizer Bill Beaulieu added that marching can help build a sense of community and solidarity. Beaulieu believes Trump is dangerous and “represents authoritarianism,” but some who oppose the incoming president’s agenda might be feeling depressed or beleaguered following his second presidential win. “A lot of people are extremely worried about Donald Trump, no surprise,” he said. “But you want to let people know the answer isn’t depression or apathy. The only thing we can do is keep organizing and letting people know that everyone doesn’t agree. That this isn’t right, what’s going on.” Around the country and globe, the upcoming People’s March events will “necessarily have a different flavor” than the Women’s Marches of earlier years, predicted Tammy Vigil, associate professor of media science at Boston University. “The context is dramatically different,” she said. In 2016, Trump won the presidential election but lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by almost 2.9 million votes. Women’s March protesters had a sense of broad support among voters, with the sentiment that the election outcome wasn’t really representative of the will of the people, Vigil said. “There was a confidence in the marchers that they were speaking for a majority of Americans, whether or not that was actually the case,” she said. In November, Trump had a more decisive victory over opponent Vice President Kamala Harris, winning the popular vote and garnering about 2.5 million more votes than in 2020. “The dramatic and clear win by Trump leaves protesters in an odd situation this time around,” Vigil said. “While they still have a significant message, there is a sense that the breadth of support is smaller and that the audience is different.” Although Trump’s win was a result of many factors, Vigil believes racism and sexism played a big role. “The protesters need to convince the American people of the importance of embracing diversity, inclusivity, and respecting others,” she added. “In all honesty, I am not sure if the protest organizers understand the difference in the audience this time around. It gives them a bit more of an uphill battle.” Protest politics In Chicago, Women’s March organizers had predicted the 2017 event would draw some 22,000 participants. They were stunned when more than 10 times that many showed up. The Women’s March on Washington that year eclipsed attendance at Trump’s inauguration, according to crowd experts. Then in January 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement against sexual violence and harassment, the anniversary march in Chicago topped crowd estimates from the previous year. But by late 2018, several leaders of the national Women’s March group faced backlash over accusations of infighting and antisemitism, in part due to connections to Louis Farrakhan, whose Chicago-based Nation of Islam is designated as a hate group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The national board members who were mired in controversy stepped down, and a new board was soon established that “consists of leaders from a wide variety of communities, disciplines, ethnicities, religious beliefs, gender identities and experiences,” the national organization said in a late 2019 statement. Even though they were separate organizations, some local Women’s March groups in other cities canceled marches and rallies in 2019, or tried their best to distance themselves from the national organization. Chicago organizers said they had already decided to forgo a January event that year, citing costs and limited resources following a fall march, and encouraged members to create their own events scattered around the Chicago area; however, some members bemoaned the lack of a unified, centrally located march in Chicago. The first Women’s Marches helped engage many of their participants politically, and that mobilization didn’t end after the marches concluded, said David S. Meyer, professor of sociology at the University of California at Irvine. While doing research, Meyer found at least a half-dozen women who were first-time candidates for the Virginia House of Delegates and won, who credited their decision to run for office to inspiration from the Women’s March. The Women’s March events of 2017 were among a wave of protests against the Trump administration in Washington, D.C., and around the nation that focused on various issues, from LGBTQ rights to supporting science to immigration. In late January and February 2017, protesters swarmed major airports across the country to demonstrate against Trump’s travel ban targeting Muslim-majority nations. It was one of Trump’s first acts as president in early 2017: an executive order prohibiting refugees from coming to the United States for 120 days and barring citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the country for 90 days. “And if you looked through the photos of the airport protests, it’s not really hard to find pussy hats there,” Meyer said, noting the overlap in the two anti-Trump administration protest movements. However, Trump’s reelection as president could be seen as “a massive defeat” of what the Women’s Marches were fighting for, Meyer noted. “On the one hand, having Trump come back, that doesn’t look like a win for the Women’s March, right?” said Meyer, co-editor of the book “The Resistance: The Dawn of the Anti-Trump Opposition Movement” and author of the book “How Social Movements (Sometimes) Matter.” “On the other hand,” he continued, “they had to go through three versions of the Muslim ban, each one progressively softening it. Democrats made huge gains in the midterm elections and at the local level.” He added that grassroots action matters but not by itself: Marches and demonstrations have to be tied to other political activities. While the iconic protest events can be dramatic and powerful, the politics and change that emerges is usually on a smaller scale and incremental, he said. “The thing is, we want to tell these really short dramatic stories about protest movements. The simple story is Rosa Parks decides not to sit in the back of the bus, people protest and segregation ends. And that’s a great story,” he said. “But in real life, there were bus protests going back 10 years before that and racial equality and segregation hung on a little bit longer, right?” Margaret Hefferon of East Lakeview protested at the Women’s March in Chicago in 2017, while wearing her infant son in a carrier. She recalled the positive energy and optimism of the day; she attended many other marches and protests for similar causes afterward. Hefferon was looking forward to taking part in People’s March Chicagoland: Unite Against Fascism, but was disappointed when the event changed locations to Springfield and then disappeared entirely from the website. She said she inquired about helping to organize another centrally located Chicago march on Saturday, but acknowledged that it was probably too short notice; she’s also working on Monday and can’t take part in the protests scheduled that day. “I am sad to miss (the marches) but I think it is a shame there is not one devoted strictly to ending the wealth disparity in this country,” she added. “The plan is to flood us with distractions and divide us, and everything gets fractured. This is a time when all the groups need to join forces, which is what The People’s March is talking about.” [email protected]