We Asked Protesters What They Pledge to Do for the Next 4 Years

Women’s March participants speak out against Trump.

More than a million people took to the streets of cities across the country Saturday to protest President Donald Trump on his first full day in office. Demonstrators at the events, which were billed as Women’s Marches, criticized the president’s policy agenda and his attacks on women and minorities. Many of the marchers pledged to use the rallies as a springboard to get involved in local politics.

“This is the first election in which I’ve become politically involved,” said Olivia Lezcano, 20, from Cleveland. “So I’m considering getting involved with my local congressman and local municipal government.”

The flagship event in Washington, DC, overwhelmed the city’s train system, as event organizers were swamped with more than double the 200,000 people they expected. People packed Independence Avenue in downtown DC, which runs along the National Mall, eventually clogging the planned march route, according to the Associated Press, and likely surpassing the turnout for Trump’s inauguration on Friday. Large numbers of marchers also came out in Denver, New York City, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, and dozens of other cities around the United States and abroad.

We asked a range of the marchers in DC what they were committing to do over the next four years. You can check out their answers in the video above.

 

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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