Resistance, solidarity, and sisterhood in the age of Trump: images from the Women’s March in Washington, D.C

ABSTRACT

On Saturday, January 21, 2017, the day after the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States, there was an impressive Women’s March in Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital. The guiding vision and definition of principles of the Women’s March equated Women’s Rights with Human Rights and called for the liberation of “Black women, Native Women, poor women, immigrant women, disabled women, Muslim women, Lesbian, queer and, trans women,” whose perspectives had too often been ignored or excluded from the predominately white mainstream women’s movement in the past. The demonstration represented a massive intergenerational protest of women, transgendered, and men from 50 states who, having donned their hand-made knitted and crocheted pink pussy hats, gathered to brandish their posters such as “Asian Pacific Islander Queers from San Francisco,” “Science is REAL,” “Take your BROKEN HEART and make ART.” The authors examine protest signs, symbols, and artifacts from the Women’s March for intersectionality of issues posed by the march organizers and participants. Critical discourse analysis is utilized to explore the messages, movements, values, and identities through the combination of images, text, historical moment (setting and time), and participants in the demonstration.

Acknowledgments

This article developed from two sections of EDRS 818 Critical Discourse Analysis, a College of Education & Human Development (CEHD) Ph.D. research methods course offered Fall 2017 (https://cehd.gmu.edu/assets/docs/syllabi/2017/syllabus_28402.pdf) and Summer 2018 at George Mason University. We thank EDRS 818 participants, especially Talisa Jackson, Diana (Dee) Delfin, and Ricardo O. Sanchez, all presenters at the 2018 CEHD Student Research Symposium. We appreciate the 2018 ISLS Conference Committee’s decision to feature social movements as the theme which provided us with the opportunity to submit our initial presentation. Thanks to Ian Martin for his support in creating the critical space for a poster gallery, facilitating synergy through dialog with women’s movement participants from many countries. We would also like to thank Dr. Paul Chamness Iida-Miller and the three anonymous reviewers whose encouraging questions and stimulating suggestions improved the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

We have no known conflict of interest to disclose.