The inauguration of Donald Trump on Friday won’t be the only large event in Washington this weekend.
As many as 200,000 people are expected to attend a large protest in support of women’s rights on Saturday. At least four Maritime women will be among them.
“I hope it’s peaceful, I expect it to be peaceful. I expect there to be a lot of comraderies, a lot of passion,” says Debbie Eden.
Eden and her friend Sandra Bain are two of four women from Saint John who plan to attend the Women’s March on Washington. They’ll be skipping the presidential swearing in, happening Friday.
“I’m curious to watch but I don’t want to watch. It’s a weird voyeur feeling about it, but we’ll go to the march on Saturday and I expect a tour-de-force,” says Eden.
As part of the demonstration, the women will be wearing pink knitted hats along with thousands of others, as part of a movement that started after a notorious audio tape surfaced, in which Donald Trump made lewd comments about women.
“So we all know what this is about, and it’s a statement about that incident and how you can’t touch that. You’re not touching that and we won’t stand for it,” explains Eden.
Both Eden and Bain say the election results in November felt very personal.
“We marched, we did things, we had discussions. We were critical thinkers,” says Bain.
“When I saw the election results come in, I felt like a large part of my life work had been pulled out from under my feet, and I kind of felt personal about it,” says Eden.
For Bain, she hopes the march will send a message to Donald Trump and the rest of the world.
“I think it’s going to be very empowering for the woman who are there and the fact that it has grown, and there are going to be marches all across North America,” says Bain.
Solidarity marches will also be happening on Saturday in Saint John, Fredericton and Halifax.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Nick Moore.
