Marching for the Movement by Robin Miniter

Emerging from the subway, Midtown Manhattan was strikingly quiet on the morning of January 21 st , 2017. It was a feeling that, even as a recent New York City transplant, struck me as eerie. Armed with a recorder and a camera, I walked across the street with barely a nod in either direction. The road was blocked; we were all heading east.

Down at 43 nd St. and 2 nd Ave., the swelling throng gathered in parkas and pink knit hats; with bedazzled cardboard signs and flags and babies in slings and dogs leading on leashes. Here we began. Crossing avenues and streets, mile by mile, 400,000 marchers—far surpassing the initial projected number of 75,000—amassed in the name of women’s equality. They shouted; they shimmied; they came in costume and brought their jazz bands. The halal carts were as busy as the clergymen handing out roses on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. By the end of the day, the world come to understand the massive stance for human rights that had taken place.

What was born as a Facebook event in response to the 2016 presidential election spawned a global movement: over 400 marches took places in the U.S. in conjunction with 168 marches in 81 other countries across the globe. An estimated almost 5,000,000 people marched in cities across America, and another 5,000,000 world-wide. Here, you will meet some of the faces from the Women’s March on New York City.