Michael Wines and Farah Stockman

In Washington, in a frigid marble plaza only blocks from the White House, early attendees seemed to be outnumbered by barkers hawking T-shirts and buttons.

“I’m disappointed. It’s definitely not the turnout I was looking for,” said Peggy Baron, 53, a lawyer from Dublin, Ohio, who said the first Washington march two years ago had been “wall-to-wall women.”

As the morning progressed, throngs of marchers began to fill the plaza, and spirits visibly lifted.

“I came two years ago. It’s definitely smaller, but the spirit is very much alive,” said Rachel Stucky, 53, an educator from Salem, Oregon. She added: “The experience I had two years ago was indescribable. I wanted to feel that way again.”

The events around the country were partly a celebration of what has been achieved since the first march. An unprecedented number of women have been elected to Congress, many with the help of women who became politically active for the first time after marching in 2017.

But the gatherings were also a test of how the movement has weathered the storm of controversy in recent months. The New York-based leaders of the national Women’s March group that planned the first march on Washington have been under fire for allegations of anti-Semitism.

Tamika Mallory, co-president of Women’s March, has publicly praised Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, who is widely reviled for anti-Semitic speeches. The Women’s March has issued a series of statements denouncing anti-Semitism and apologized for its delayed response to the controversy, but Mallory has declined to denounce Farrakhan himself.

Some marchers said they were conflicted about whether to come, given the controversy over the anti-Semitism charges. In Washington, Trish Klein, Jody Kanikula and Amy Hain from Chicago said they had an intense discussion before deciding to make the trip.

In the end, they chose to do it, because “apathy is not an option,” said Klein, a 39-year-old special education teacher.

The controversy over Farrakhan added to tensions that were already brewing between the national Women’s March group and some of the local activists around the country who planned marches in their own hometowns.

On Saturday, those divisions manifested themselves in two rival marches in New York and two in Philadelphia.

In New York, some marchers said they had done research to decide which event to attend, but many said they merely went to whichever was more conveniently located. The march held by the Women’s March Alliance on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, which advertised its opposition to anti-Semitisim, attracted a crowd that stretched about 10 city blocks, although there was ample space between the marchers.

About 4 miles south, in Foley Square, a rally planned by a group affiliated with the national Women’s March attracted a modest crowd.

“I was worried that it was going to be small and it turns out it’s small,” said Donna McDonough, a 69-year-old registered nurse who traveled by train from Hamden, Connecticut. Noting the controversy, she said: “I think Mallory should unequivocally boycott Farrakhan but no one should boycott this march. She doesn’t represent the entire organization.”

In Philadelphia, where the two rival events were separated by only a few hundred yards, many marchers weren’t even aware of the difference between the events or didn’t care.

The marches did not attract many high-profile national figures, although Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who recently announced she was running for president in 2020, appeared at an event in Iowa. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., spoke at the Women’s March Alliance rally, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., spoke in Boston.

It is difficult to say how much the controversy depressed turnout.

Even before the controversy, organizers of the Washington march debated the idea of trying to hold another big national demonstration, knowing it would be impossible to come close to the turnout of the first year, when more than half a million people gathered on the streets of the capital.

Jo Reger, professor of sociology at Oakland University in Michigan, who studies feminist movements, said other factors that can depress turnout include activist burnout, and paradoxically, success.

“Marches or movements can lose some momentum when people see some of their issues being addressed,” she said. “With the recent midterm elections, some may feel like the country is going in a different direction after the Trump election and that may lower the numbers participating.”

Some who marched in previous years said the controversy was just one more reason to stay home.

Savannah Fritz, a 24-year-old supervisor at a homeless shelter who marched in Boston in 2017 and Philadelphia last year decided to sit out this year because she felt that the money spent on stages and portable toilets could be put to better use.

“I obviously know that protests are an important part of social justice, but I just feel like the money would be way better spent actually combating the issues the Trump administration has created,” she said. The anti-Semitism charges, she said, also created a “major hesitation.”

Still, there was evidence Saturday that the political events of the last two years had inspired a new level activism among many women.

Lori Clarke, 62, a retired schoolteacher from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, said the 2018 women’s march in Philadelphia was the first time she had attended a public protest.

“I’m just a normal everyday average woman,” Clark said. “I would never have thought of coming out to protest.”

“I hate crowds,” she added. “The reality of a Trump administration hit home, and I felt that I needed my voice to be heard.”

And in Washington, Hilary Ruesch, a 38-year-old marketing director for a wine importer, said she and others had traveled from Brooklyn to “come back to where it all began.”

They were members of a local chapter for the liberal grassroots group Indivisible. The chapter has a mailing list of about 300 members, but in two years, the core of the group — the ones who could be counted on to do the grunt work of local political advocacy — had dwindled to about 50 people. “We’ve seen some attrition,” she said. But those who remain “are really dug in.”

And she said they played a small — but satisfying — role in the 2018 election that gave Democrats a working majority in the New York state Legislature, and in the subsequent lobbying campaign that ended this week with the Legislature’s vote to liberalize the state’s restrictive election laws.

“This time there are not as many,” Ruesch said of the march this year. “But it’s a long battle. And we still have all these people.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/us/womens-march-2019.html" id="3535df43-be4b-3b43-a097-ebfe07e0352a">The New York Times</a>.

For Third Women's March, Smaller Crowds and Some Frayed Edges

WASHINGTON — Whether it was stormy weather, reports of controversy or the simple waning of interest over time, the third annual Women’s March events Saturday attracted much smaller crowds than in years past.

<h1>In Washington, in a frigid marble plaza only blocks from the White House, early attendees seemed to be outnumbered by barkers hawking T-shirts and buttons.</h1>

“I’m disappointed. It’s definitely not the turnout I was looking for,” said Peggy Baron, 53, a lawyer from Dublin, Ohio.

“I came two years ago. It’s definitely smaller, but the spirit is very much alive,” said Rachel Stucky, 53, an educator from Salem, Oregon.

For third women's march, smaller crowds and some frayed edges

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Michael Wines and Farah Stockman

Articles written by the author

For Third Women's March, Smaller Crowds and Some Frayed Edges

For third women's march, smaller crowds and some frayed edges