There were two protests that took place in Washington, DC, on Saturday, both under the banner of the Women’s March on Washington.

One was headlined by Angela Davis and Gloria Steinem; the Indigo Girls and Toshi Reagon; Alicia Keys and Ashley Judd. The other was a messy, glorious, wildly unstructured free-for-all of families and singletons, millennials and octogenarians, all there to take a stand for women’s rights, in whatever form that took.

They waved banners and sang songs. They began call-and-response chants. They just couldn’t hear a single word of the official program happening way off in the distance at the main stage. And they weren’t much bothered by it. Every so often a cheer would roll like a sonic boom over the National Mall, but by the time it reached the crowds wedged shoulder to shoulder on the periphery, far beyond the reach of the jumbotrons and loudspeakers, no one was entirely sure what they were cheering for.

They cheered anyway.

The beginning

The official start time of the march was 10 am. By 9:45 am, the Women’s March on Washington was a veritable flood of humanity, clogging public transport and streets. Marchers were already swapping war stories of hour-long waits for metro trains. Everyone relished the fact that it was the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration that the real crowds had arrived.

They poured down Louisiana Avenue from Union Station in a torrent of knit pink “pussy” hats and signs — so, so many signs. Hand-lettered and professional, heartfelt and snarky, signs with literary quotes from the likes of Albert Camus and Maya Angelou and signs featuring popular internet memes whose meanings were often lost on the less social media–savvy.

I joined a group of teachers streaming down toward the main entrance to the day’s events, moving down Constitution Avenue past the National Gallery of Art. Just in front of us was a massive Jews March for Justice banner. Across the street, a group of women plumbers in orange hard hats joined the march; three women lined up behind me holding handmade signs reading “Nasty Woman,” “Keep your laws OFF MY body,” and “Liberty and Justice for ALL.”

The main event was set to begin at Third Street and Independence Avenue, Northwest, in front of the Museum of the American Indian. But the access points were choked. So we all just sort of stood there, inching if we moved at all, a wall of excited protesters stuck blocks away from the real action. Behind me, a 22-year-old woman named Nadine Abdelrahim with the Muslim Women’s Alliance held up a large poster she had created. “Ceci N’est Pas un Hijab,” (“This is not a hijab”) it read, a play on the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte’s famous painting. Abdelrahim had come with 55 women from Illinois, including her mother and sisters.

“I felt like I had to come to DC,” Abdelrahim, who is a student at University of Illinois Chicago, told me. “I can’t just sit back and let Trump say what he wants. You can’t let the bully win. And I feel really strong when I’m with a bunch of people together.”

That idea — of being here, of being seen — was the primary motivator for almost everyone I spoke to. While the media had spent weeks parsing the statements of the march’s organizers to nail down exactly what their agenda was, many of the people in the streets seemed far less concerned about such details; they wanted to focus on the day that was unfolding in front of them. Most were happy to simply make a statement about where this new government was headed: the wrong direction.

From Facebook to the street

In a way, the double life of the Women’s March on Washington isn’t so odd when you consider how the protest began.

The idea started on Facebook, with a pair of posts created by a white grandmother in Hawaii and a white businesswoman in Brooklyn. It was initially dubbed the “Million Woman March,” but the moniker was quickly dumped when critics accused them of having (wittingly or unwittingly) poached the name from the African-American marches of the same name.

The lack of diversity among the early organizers was also criticized, and the leadership of the march was quickly expanded to include women of color. Linda Sarsour, a Muslim American activist, Tamika Mallory, an African American gun control advocate, and Carmen Perez, a Latina criminal justice reform advocate, eventually put together a platform that was unabashedly progressive and vocally conscious of other social justice movements — Black Lives Matter, immigrant rights, reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, and beyond.

And yet controversy remained. Hillary Clinton was, conspicuously, initially not honored among those who had inspired the march. A pro-life group was disinvited from co-sponsoring the march.

But on Saturday, most of the marchers I spoke to hadn’t paid much attention to the march’s growing pains. They came equipped to talk about whatever issues they cared most about — from LGBTQ rights to disability advocacy to education — and they wanted to show up and be counted. To take a stand against misogyny — and against the new president. And they wanted to celebrate the spirit of unity they saw unfolding around them.

Hour two

Near the National Gallery of Art, clutches of mothers and daughters stood together, all cheerfully plotting how, or even whether, to make it toward the speakers and performances.

Nina Sanders, a 48-year-old African-American mother from Maryland, had designed a set of blue T-shirts for her daughters, Kennedy, 15, and Jalyn, 22, and their friends. Everyone sported the shirt emblazoned with the phrase “Don’t Make America Hate Again.”

“I thought it was important to be here with my daughters for women’s rights, for civil liberties. I wasn’t able to march back in the day, but my parents did,” Sanders said. “I thought it was important for me to show them how to peacefully demonstrate.”

Her friends Muriel Suggs and Gaye Barksdale wore the blue shirts as well.

“I have an 11-year-old daughter,” said Suggs. “I want the world to be so much better for her than it was for me. I am here today to support women. To receive equal pay, for our right to governor our own bodies. Solidarity amongst women.”

As I wandered past the Maryland women, I took a photo of a woman dressed as an enormous, puffy vagina.

Just behind her, like an off-Broadway production of Les Misérables, dozens of protesters had begun to climb light poles and trash cans and stacks of fencing. Sarah Newcomb, 39, stood high up one of these makeshift stages with her 11-year-old daughter. Newcomb wore a homemade bib emblazoned with “Liberty and Justice for All”; her daughter held a sheet saying “Resist!”

Newcomb had never protested before. She saw this election as a wakeup call. “Right before Donald Trump got elected, I happened to be reading about 1930s Germany. I saw too many parallels to feel the time for resistance is later,” Newcomb shouted down to me from her lofty perch atop a stack of black barriers.

A few yards away, back on earth, Lilibeth Sanchez held up a sign that said “This Pussy Grabs Back.” She flew in from Albuquerque for the march and met up with family who live in DC, including Monica Bascon, whose sign said “Immigrants we get the job done.”

“I am an immigrant,” said Bascon. “I am from the Philippines, and [Trump] insulted us. And I don't think that’s right, and America is supposed to be the land for everyone and what happened to that?” But Bascon, like many I spoke to, was not simply concerned with her own story. She quickly added, “I see the LGBTQ webpage is gone on the White House website, and the climate webpage is gone. What happened to that?”

Just before I made another attempt for the stages, I met Suzanne Weaver, 48, who drove up from Richmond, Virginia, with her girls, ages 8 and 11. “My wife’s great-grandmother was a suffragist,” she said. “I thought, what a great way to honor that legacy, and teach our girls early on that there is strength in numbers.” Weaver is white, and wore a pink cowboy hat with cat ears attached.

“I wanted them to see the men out here, the people of color, the foreign-born, the races, religions, and nationalities. Straight and gay together. That’s how change happens.”

Hour three

I decided to brave the crowds once more and attempt to get closer to the action, and so, steeling myself, I walked past a phalanx of portable toilets and entered the fray. The walls of the Museum of the American Indian had been scaled by those desperate for a glimpse of a jumbotron screen showing what was happening on the main stage. Men and women were clinging to the bricks. We could see the screen, in the distance, but hear nothing.

Instead, I chatted with a woman in front of me whose sign was penned in Spanish. “Ni Una Mas.” Not one more.

“I am a mother, I am a lesbian, I am an immigrant, and I am a woman, so that is the reason why I came,” said Imelda Melgar, who came to this country from El Salvador 15 years ago. “I wanted to show the world it is not okay to discriminate women. And I want the same for my daughters and the same for my son — to be a man and respect women. I want my kids to be equal by the time they grow up.” It was not her first time marching for women’s rights, she said. “I wanted to show up. I wanted to be part of it. I want change.”

Past Melgar, the crowd was stopped in its tracks. We turned back and walked on, hoping to find another entrance point.

A large group had unfurled a caution-tape-yellow banner reading “No Human Being Is Illegal” in English, Spanish, and Arabic.

Every so often, clumps of protestors would start chanting: “We don’t want your border, taco trucks on every corner!”

A few yards past a table selling books by Rebecca Solnit and Angela Davis, and texts explaining Trotsky and Marxism, I met a handful of women who were first-time marchers. There was Morgan Boyer, 23, who held a sign that read “Feminism Must Be Race-Trans-Gender-Class INCLUSIVE.” She came down from New York. “I would have regretted not being here,” she said.

And there was the mother-daughter duo from Connecticut, Barbara Macgregor (71) and Nancy (40). It was Barbara’s first march; Nancy hadn’t marched since college. “It was the tone [of the election], the outcome, and the continuing barbs,” said Nancy, of her motivation to come to DC to protest.

Has it made you more political? I asked them.

“I’m here!” said Barb, laughing. “I’m here,” she said again, soberly.

Drums pounded behind us. A woman named Tammy Brake danced briefly into my path. “We’re from Brooklyn!” she sang out. She sported a button that read “Flatbush Tenant Coalition.” Brake came with 60 community members — an entire busload.

“We are a tenant organization to empower tenants against landlords to know their rights. Tenant power!” She gave a whoop and laughed. Then she explained a bit more, about working with immigrant women to understand their rights.

This day, she said, “is about more than feminism. It is everything. We are a diverse world now. All this bigotry and racism? There is no room for that.”

“There is no room for that,” she repeated, for emphasis. Everyone around me nodded.

Hour four

An enormous swath of humanity headed towards the Hirshhorn Museum. And then we stood. And stood. Stuck in the street. Backpack to backpack. Rumors abounded: An entrance was about to open up. Then marchers began pushing back toward the Mall again: It was too crowded. We moved on to the garden side of the museum past high metal gates.

Two men in red “Make America Great Again/45” hats, worn with apparent sincerity, pushed past everyone. No one said a word.

That entrance, too, was closed. We were shuttled back toward Jefferson Avenue. Then we saw a break — a jumbotron, just past the parking lot of the Department of Agriculture. Alicia Keys was on stage singing “Girl on Fire.” The crowd erupted in cheers.

Janelle Monáe took the stage and began a call-and-response:

“Say her name!” she shouted, then paused. “Sandra Bland!” she shouted, reminding the crowd of the 28-year-old African-American woman who was found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas, on July 13, 2015. Her death was ruled a suicide, but many suspected foul play. “Say her name!” came the roar from the jumbotron, and the crowd. Next to me, two white friends who had attended Yale together chatted about privilege and when they had woken up to the social justice issues.

“I felt I had to be able to tell my grandchildren I was [here],” said Emily Ambrose, 28. “I had not gone out for Black Lives Matter. The same empathy I am asking of others I hadn’t yet shown. It’s uncomfortable.” The election, she said, made her realize she had to stand up — not just for herself, but for everyone around her. The first time she ever protested was the day after the election. She went with her gay brother and her Latino boyfriend and realized, for too long, she had taken civil rights for granted.

Hour five

Suddenly the announcement came: Time to march! We moved quickly to join the suddenly fast-moving sea. Next to me I saw a quintet of sisters in pink. Lina Zayed had flown in from Illinois. Her sign read “Repeal & Replace Trump, not ACA.”

“As Muslim women, we are part of this community,” Zayed said as she walked. “It is not fair to label us as terrorists. We came here to show solidarity with everyone else. Because of what [Trump] has done, the separation and segregation.” Ronza Othman, Zayed’s sister, who is functionally blind, added that the issues driving her to walk were “touching all aspects” of her life, “As a Muslim and a woman. And a first-generation American.” Their family, she said, came originally from Palestine. As we parted, Zayed stopped and looked at me. “We love our country,” she said.

I climbed up on a bench to see where we were. The sea of signs spread for blocks, barely moving. A yellow Jewish star read “My great-grandmother didn’t flee Warsaw for THIS.” We joined the flow, and then we were stuck. Really stuck. For several long minutes no one moved at all.

And yet, even then, at a moment when the crowd became so thick not a soul could move one foot in any direction, there was nary a voice raised in anger or frustration, apart from the call-and-response of, “This is what democracy looks like!”

Finally we slipped to the side and began to walk again. And suddenly we saw: The march had long since spilled over and past the Mall itself, onto the streets, 12th Street and Ninth. By the time we reached Pennsylvania Avenue, police cars could barely pass, and still the people continued to march — all down the same broad street that, just the day before, had served as the parade route for the newly inaugurated President Trump.