Michele Richard of Glenview marched to stand up for women’s rights – particularly those of her three daughters, four sisters, and 90-year-old mother.
Indira Saladi of Glencoe, who traveled on an overnight bus to Washington, D.C., wanted to help give a voice to other women without the economic means to make the long trip.
And Mary Bleeker of Northbrook just wanted to be heard by U.S. President Donald Trump.
“We just want issues to be thought of by the new administration and not move backward,” Bleeker said.
All three were among an unknown number of North Shore residents who attended either the Women’s March in Washington on Saturday, or its sister march in Chicago. Several who attended described the events – which, along with similar marches across the country and worldwide, drew hundreds of thousands of participants, if not more – as joyful, peaceful and energizing.
“People were really hyper aware of each other,” said Kelly Kerwin, 49, of Glenview, who traveled to D.C. by bus for the event. “There was no pushing, and everyone was respectful of everyone’s space.”
Bleeker, 57, attended the Chicago march with friends from high school, and said critics of the event have the wrong idea.
“The fact is, (Trump) is president. I did not feel it was a hate march,” she said. “I felt it was a going forward, we want to be heard.”
Glenview resident Susan Love, 61, signed up for the D.C. march the weekend after Trump’s election because, based on his denial of climate change and attitudes toward women, Mexicans and Muslims, he “was not fit to be president,” she said.
“It became non-negotiable. It was absolutely necessary to act in a way that I stood up. I spoke up. And I rose up,” said Love, who knitted six pink “pussy hats” with cat ears for the event in reference to the president’s past comments about women’s genitalia. “I wanted to be at the center of the action.”
Some attendees, like Richard, were appalled by Trump’s remarks about females.
“The way somebody that we all know speaks of women is so disgusting that I felt that I had to just stand up and let them know just how disgusting it is,” she said.
Saladi was among a circle of Glencoe friends who raised more than $25,000 to help get women who wanted to march in Washington, but couldn’t afford to do so on their own, to the event.
She and fellow Glencoe organizer Karen Citow rode with their daughters, ages 12 and 15, on one of the buses sponsored by the newly-formed March to Action group.
“My daughter was amazed,” Saladi said. “She’d never seen anything like this. I was explaining to her that this was our democracy; this is what our democracy looks like, this is people being held accountable and people giving voice to their values.”
Citow said the long bus ride gave her a chance to meet some of the people the project had helped – including a young girl and her Spanish-speaking grandmother, both originally from Guatemala.
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“I can only speak in the present tense in Spanish, so there was a lot of laughter when we spoke, but we had so many hours together, and we realized hey, we’re all here, all the same, all sharing the same goals,” Citow said.
The group arrived at the rally just as feminist icon Gloria Steinem spoke to the crowd.
“I cried when I heard her speak,” Citow said.
Wendy Serrino, one of the organizers of the project, said she flew to Washington on Jan. 19 and watched Trump’s inauguration. She said the Trump supporters “were really nice people,” but the inauguration crowd was much smaller than the crowd that gathered the next day for the march.
“We left three hours early to get to the march and (the train) was standing room only, packed like sardines, all the way in from Virginia,” she said. “When we got to the station at L’Enfant Plaza, it took us about 45 minutes just to get up the stairs. It was mobbed with people wearing the pink hats; men were wearing them, kids were wearing them. It was a sea of pink.”
Serrino, Saladi and Citow said people they met through the sponsorship project are already planning individual and group actions. One woman has planned a “postcard party” at her Chicago home, where people can write postcards to their elected officials on various issues, Saladi said.
“It’s so amazing. All we did was pay for their bus ride, and now they’re involved, and we’re involved, in our democracy,” she said.
Twitter: @Akukulka11
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy