Thousands Of Women Prepare To March In Washington

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

The Women's March on Washington has begun. A sea of pink hats spreads across the National Mall. The speeches are underway. The crowd has heard from America Ferrera, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Gloria Steinem.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

GLORIA STEINEM: We are here and around the world for a deep democracy that says we will not be quiet, we will not be controlled, we will work for a world in which all countries are connected. God may be in the details, but the goddess is in connections.

(CHEERING)

SIMON: There are similar assemblies that are occurring all across the country and in cities across the world. NPR's Sarah McCammon is in the District of Columbia at the main event. She's been listening to speakers, and, for that matter, marchers this morning. Sarah, thanks for being with us.

SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Yeah, good morning.

SIMON: What can you see?

MCCAMMON: Well, there are lots and lots of people, to put it mildly, Scott, here, just kind of off the Mall, where a lot of the big museums are in D.C. And I'm kind of just off where the main event is happening, the big rally with lots of speakers and music. And there are lots of people, many of them - most of them women but lots of men, too - sort of streaming away from the site right now. I think, you know, steering of some of them to - who've already marched through the city. And I've been walking around the last hour or so just talking to people. More and more people coming off the subways, so it just keeps getting bigger.

SIMON: What are the signs? What are the slogans? What are the chants?

MCCAMMON: Well, you know, that sort of central theme of this event is women's rights. It is, of course, the Women's March. And it was organized as a pushback to some of Donald Trump's rhetoric about women, including that "Access Hollywood" video that came out about him that was released about a month before the election in which he talks about grabbing women's genitals without their consent. In response to that, I'm seeing a lot of women with these pink - what they're calling pink pussyhats, like a cat ear. They have cat ears on them, and obviously it's a response to that. And lots of signs sort of to that effect - things like don't grab me. And then it's broader than that, too. There are signs about LGBT rights, a couple about climate change, and overall it's, you know, sort of billed as a Women's March, but it's about a lot more than that.

SIMON: There were questions raised really all throughout the process about the diversity of the leadership of this march and the diversity of the marchers. So I wonder what you see there that might reflect that.

MCCAMMON: Yeah, there had been some controversy, right, about the organization, about whether women of color were given enough of a voice in this. And, you know, I would say this crowd is majority white. But there is, at the same time, a lot of diversity. I have - I talked to a couple of - a family from Guatemala originally, lived in the U.S. for a long time, a mother and her two daughters. And, you know, you see people of sort of all shapes and colors here and certainly many generations, old and young. Not a lot of children, but I met a mother and her two daughters. So there is a range of people here, and certainly, like I said, some men. I talked to one man who said he's here because he has a mother and he cares about women's rights.

SIMON: And we have big tap on this afternoon, isn't there, at the march?

MCCAMMON: That's right. The real march itself kicks off this afternoon. A rally will be wrapping up, and then the group will march through D.C.

SIMON: NPR's Sarah McCammon, thanks so much for being with us.

MCCAMMON: Thank you.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.