Event organizers said the protest to voice opposition to Donald Trump’s inauguration was the largest march in state history.
At 1 p.m., even as people were still in traffic trying to make their way into the city, marchers spilled from their starting point at Montpelier High School onto the street, walking the two blocks to gather on the lawn of the Statehouse. Environmental groups demonstrated, as did Planned Parenthood, Migrant Justice, and Bread and Puppet Theater.
Emcee Elise Greaves, of Rights and Democracy, paused the proceedings to open the podium up for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who made a surprise appearance. The crowd that filled the Statehouse lawn and spilled across State Street erupted.
“I have been driving down the interstate for many years and I have never seen traffic backed up like it was today,” Sanders said, to wild cheers. He promised to work against Republican efforts to end the Affordable Care Act, defund Planned Parenthood and come down hard on undocumented immigrants.
“Mr. Trump, I’ve got bad news for you,” Sanders said. “You are not going to divide us by gender, race or who we love.”
More than 60 organizations contributed to the effort, said organizer Melinda Moulton.
Moulton, who serves on the board of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, said on Friday that she planned to march with her grandchildren to “protect our planet, to protect the rights of the disenfranchised, for equality of all people.” She called the effort “a message to the world that Vermont stands in solidarity for all these things.”
Protesters heard from speakers including former Vermont governor Madeleine Kunin, founder and director of Black Lives Matter Vermont Ebony Nyoni, Rep. Kiah Morris (D-Bennington), and the spoken word group Muslim Girls Making Change.
By mid-afternoon Saturday, Bonnie Acker’s voice was hoarse from chanting. She had facilitated a community effort to create banners for the event. She got Jabari Jones, a Burlington artist and Black Lives Matter activist, to create giant cardboard masks of goddesses. They led off the parade, as figures “symbolic of principles that people can unite around,” Jones told Seven Days. “All politics is local, and we’re making a stand here.”
Early on, organizers predicted 4,000 attendees. By Friday, estimates had risen to 6,000. But attendees kept pouring into Montpelier, which has a population just under 8,000. Downtown shops were bustling and sidewalks were filled with sign-toting protesters.
“I wish you could see the picture from the stage,” Kunin told the crowd. “It’s like spring is here and a million flowers are blooming.” Then Kunin urged Vermonters to remain hopeful. “The next four years we will be heard,” she said. “We will not be silent.”
Dvora Zipkin, a Worcester resident, stood along State Street watching other protesters pass. A cardboard sign was hanging from her neck, with a message scrawled in marker: “This nasty old Jewish lesbian still can’t believe I have to protest this crap.”
“Democracy is dead,” she told Seven Days. “We’re the people who need to take it back.”
Rachel O’Sullivan had come to the march with her daughter Noelle. She teaches at Champlain Elementary School in Burlington and wanted to support her New American students, she said.
She added, “I felt like I just couldn’t stay home.”
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I love all of this and it gives me such hope with one exception, which is why was a man who helped create the vitriolic, partisan rhetoric with no regard for facts the microphone? Bernie Sanders is just as responsible for Donald Trump as anyone who voted for him, maybe more. Why, at the Women’s March are we listening to the angry white man?
Bernie is a sell out and needs to shut up. He needs to step aside so a real leader can take his spot and move the country forward. If you believe Bernie has anyone’s best interest at heart other than his own you might need a brain transplant. Having him at your girl power rally deligitimises your entire event.
I am so sorry that money spent on this march was not instead used to assist women like my sisters and families in VT. To march against something unknow because it is change which they fear instead of actions which show they will not tolerate system abuse makes me wonder how many have read the Constitution of the US and VT, how many have read the history books telling of what our Founders wrote and did to change America and VT. Bernie didn’t help my carpenter nephews, self employed when I called for help with Obama’s insurance that would cost them mor ethan their earnings would allow and still not give medical coverage because of the $10,000 deductible. If they really want good government don’t agree with programs that do nothing for the working poor.
The marches were a great way to show our resistance to tRump and his claque. We know this administration wants to traffic in “alternative facts (lies),” however we must stay vigilant and active so that we don’t lose our democracy to fascism.
When are you liberals going to wake up?? Pres Trump isn’t taking away any women rights …As for the so called affordable care act, think you need to use your brains, he’s making changes to it, lowing the deductible, lowing the premiums!!! You liberals DO NOT represent me..half of these so called women had no idea what they were marching for..and to take your young kids to this., are you serious??? Socialist Sanders sure in he– don’t represent me,!! He don’t even represent Vermont anymore..he only represent himself!!! trotting around promoting his stupid book..There wasn’t 15,000 – 20,000 people there!!! I was there and there wasn’t nearly that many..I went to see all these liberals..What were the reason for Migrant Justice, and Bread and Puppet Theater. founder and director of Black Lives Matter Vermont Ebony Nyoni, and the spoken word group Muslim Girls Making Change doing there???…are you SERIOUS again???? They don’t represent anything about women.. You democrats are something else, when obumass started dividing this country you didn’t open you mouth at all, when shumlin screw up the Vt health insurance and paid that stupid jerk $500.00 a hr for doing nothing, you did nothing, when Sanders used money from supporters and took a expensive trip along with 50 family and friends to Rome, you didn’t even open your mouth..