As soon as she stepped off the bus in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, River Forest resident Summer Zandrew said her fears of any violent clashes or confrontations at the Women’s March immediately dissipated.
Zandrew and her 10-year-old son, Pierson Lipschultz, were among hundreds of thousands of people who flocked to the nation’s capital to participate in a march primarily geared at women’s rights and gender equality issues a day after the inauguration of President Donald Trump.
Zandrew said she had worried about her and her son’s safety at the demonstration — though she said that fear did not stop her from participating — and brought chemical masks and the antidote to tear gas just in case.
But, she said, the demonstration “was nothing but beautiful, determined, amazing, creative loving.”
“I never saw a Trump supporter all day long. I never saw anyone be aggressive or mean,” she said.
Zandrew, 41, and her son traveled alongside 55 other women and children as part of bus trip organized by Zandrew’s friend and Oak Park and River Forest High School fine arts teacher, Valerie White.
White said she was devastated by the results of the election.
When White heard about the Women’s March on Washington days after the election, she said she reached out to women she had known in the community for years on Facebook and began organizing a trip. The bus cost about $7,000 to book, and each participant pitched in about $140, she said. The group boarded the bus Friday night and drove through the night, White said.
They saw dozens of other buses and hundreds of women headed to D.C. at every rest stop they stopped at on the way to the march, White said. “Women took over both restrooms at every stop we hit,” she said.
When they finally reached D.C. around 9:30 a.m. Saturday, Zandrew said the crowds were like nothing she had ever seen.
“It was unbelievable. From the moment they dropped us off, it was a sea of people, body to body. … I was in a sea of people for 12 straight hours,” Zandrew said.
Oak Park resident Lettie Sullivan, 40, who traveled from Chicago to the march on a separate bus, said she “just ran into a wall of people and couldn’t really move much” for over two hours. But despite the massive crowds, Sullivan said she could “tell right away it was peaceful and we were safe, and that was the biggest surprise.”
During the presidential campaign, Sullivan said “every issue women ever had to face came up” including rape, body shaming and assault. When Trump was elected, she said “it felt like we had work to do as a country, and so I wanted to step up and be a part of the solution. I saw the march in D.C. as a way to do that.”
White, 41, said the main focus of those marching Saturday “would fall under a general category of we’re here to unite and support each other for peace and love and kindness and the rights of all women and anyone who identifies as a women.” Within that broad focus, she said marchers carried signs protesting Trump, supporting women’s healthcare rights, family rights and other specific issues.
Zandrew said she saw little girls carrying signs that said “a women’s place is in the House and Senate.”
White said marchers were supported along the way by D.C. residents who came out of their homes to cheer the crowd on. She said “every type of person, every generation” was represented at the event.
Following the election, Sullivan said she was despondent, but now the Women’s March has made her “feel more hopefully about our ability to organize, and I think that was the biggest victory and takeaway from the march.”
White, a Chicago resident, said she’s part of another Facebook group following the march to encourage political action within the Oak Park community.
“Now we will move forward as women, and our credo is to make sure we something everyday for the cause of not letting someone like [Trump] get into office again,” she said.
Lee V. Gaines is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
