'We’ve left the domain of cutesy protest'
The Women’s March faced controversy and division. Will a rebrand be enough?
Washington, DC – It was the first full day of Donald Trump’s presidency, and the backlash was on his doorstep.
Just outside the White House on January 21, 2017, a dense sea of protesters had formed, stretching from the marble steps of the United States Capitol past the towering Washington Monument.
Handwritten signs waved in the air, with slogans like “Women’s rights are human rights”. Celebrities like Scarlett Johansson, Janelle Monae and Gloria Steinem gave speeches warning of rollbacks to reproductive rights. And supporters donned pink, pointed “pussy hats” to show their solidarity with the cause.
That protest, known as the Women’s March on Washington, went down in history as one of the largest single-day demonstrations to grip the capital city. Nearly half a million people filled the National Mall, seeming to dwarf the attendance of Trump’s own inauguration.
But as Trump prepares to take the oath of office for a second term on Monday, no such groundswell is expected to appear. The protests against his inauguration are expected to have a much smaller attendance.
So what happened to the Women’s March? And where did all the people go?
Eight years have passed, and the Women’s March annual protest has since been rebranded as the People’s March, a reflection of the internal struggles that have roiled the movement, raising questions about who felt included — and who did not.
Activist and writer Aurielle Marie was among the demonstrators participating in the 2017 Women’s March. She joined a local version of the protest in San Francisco, California.
She remembers noticing she was one of the few Black, queer women at the march. She felt invisible and pushed aside.
“I was in a bright pink, bubble-lettered poster board, kumbaya space and felt so alone and so dehumanised,” Marie told Al Jazeera.
Her experience reflected some of the turmoil unfolding behind the scenes.

Organiser ShiShi Rose was among the activists who helped mould the 2017 protest. She started working for the Women’s March when it first developed in 2016, as a reaction to Trump’s dark-horse victory in the November presidential race.
Still, she felt like the “token Black person”, working on educational outreach. She observed a lack of direction among the movement's leadership, describing the atmosphere as “chaotic”.
“They had no idea what the march was going to be,” Rose said.
She pointed out that the Women’s March had roots in a Facebook page called Pantsuit Nation, a forum for supporters of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate who lost to Trump in the 2016 election.
After Clinton’s defeat, a retired lawyer named Teresa Shook posted on the page that there should be a pro-women’s march to stand up against some of Trump’s public positions.
Throughout his campaign, Trump had prompted fears that women’s rights could be curtailed. The Republican leader had pledged to appoint anti-abortion rights judges to the Supreme Court, and multiple women had come forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct - allegations he denied.
Shook later told US media that she made a Facebook group for her idea, went to bed and woke up to find that more than 10,000 people had signed up. The Women’s March evolved from there.
But Rose noticed that, while there was some diversity among the organisers, most of the group was composed of Clinton supporters. The political and racial dynamics left her feeling isolated.
“Anyone on the outskirts wasn’t accepted,” Rose said. She believes there was too much focus on creating a “big display of wealth” and recruiting celebrities.

Rose also felt a lack of support when she became the centre of one of Women’s March’s earliest controversies. In a post on social media, Rose had called on the white women involved to listen more to their Black colleagues.
“You should be reading our books and understanding the roots of racism and white supremacy. Listening to our speeches. You should be drowning yourselves in our poetry,” she wrote.
Some white women responded by saying they felt “alienated” by her comments. The schism was even covered in The New York Times.
After the article came out, Rose said she received death threats, but the Women’s March leadership did not make an effort to keep her safe. “Even when racism was called out, they did not address it,” she said.
She eventually left the organisation after the post-inauguration march. “I stayed longer than I should have, thinking I could make an impact and share my perspective, but all it did was shame me in the end.”
But the organisation carried on. In 2018, Women’s March leaders helped rally against Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as he faced questions about allegations of sexual assault.
Then, in 2020, they held a vigil for the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was known for her work on gender equality.
And in 2022, when the Supreme Court eventually did overturn the federal right to abortion, Women’s March organisers launched a “summer of rage”, with protests from coast to coast.
But the group has also continued to weather controversies about its membership.
In 2018, for instance, a founding member alleged she was pushed out of her leadership role over her Jewish faith. The outcry over anti-Semitism led other leaders to step down. Critics also accused the group of sidelining people of colour and whitewashing feminism.
By 2019, the movement saw much smaller numbers than at its previous yearly marches, leaving some attendees disappointed.

The organisation has since brought on new leadership such as Tamika Middleton, its managing director since 2021. She acknowledges that the organisation has had to evolve to keep up with the times.
“I think we’re always in learning, and I think we're always in practice, right?” she said. “Our values don't always land in our practice in the ways that we intend them to.”
Middleton, who describes herself as part of “a southern Black radical tradition”, told Al Jazeera that this year’s annual protest — dubbed the People’s March — will not try to recreate the mass momentum of 2017.
Instead, she hopes that Tuesday’s People’s March will bring together a broader coalition of activists interested in advancing the rights of immigrants, LGBTQ+ people and the poor, as well as women.
“We are recognising the connection between all of these battles and that there is a threat, there is opposition that is beyond Trump,” Middleton said.
The shifting trends within the movement were on display last November when the Women’s March helped organise an impromptu protest outside the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
It was the weekend after the 2024 election, and Middleton noticed a difference in how the protesters were reacting to Trump’s most recent victory.
“When Trump was elected the first time, there was sort of this kind of outrage that really grew, really quickly,” she explained. “And this time what we saw, yes, we saw some outrage. We also saw frustration, we saw disappointment, we saw grief. We saw a lot of sadness.”

For Marie, the activist who attended the 2017 march in San Francisco, the last four years under Democratic President Joe Biden have also contributed to a change in public mood.
Under Biden, the US continued to provide unconditional military aid to its ally Israel — even while the Middle Eastern country waged a devastating 15-month war on Gaza, killing more than 46,800 Palestinians. United Nations experts have found Israel’s tactics in the enclave to be “consistent with genocide”.
Marie explained she sees recent events as part of a “legacy of violence” that extends beyond party lines.
“Trump is not the bogeyman,” said Marie. "This is a nation that prioritises bombs, and specifically bombing children over educating them.”
Political change, she added, requires more sustained activism than what a single yearly protest can provide.
“The action it takes to shift that government is not a couple of hours on a Saturday with a couple of signs,” Marie said. “We’ve left the domain of cutesy protest.”