I carefully duct-taped a cardboard roll from the inside of a wrapping paper roll to a two-by-four piece of foam core board. In less than 24 hours, 1 million people were going to be able to read “I am Woman Hear Me Roar” from my very own protest sign. The date was Jan. 20, 2017, and I was about to head down for the Women’s March on Washington.

The Women’s March on Washington was an anti-Trump, pro-women protest, which was eye-opening at the sheer size of it. In Washington alone, 1.2 million people participated, 3 million marched across America, and 5 million protested all over the globe, making the Women’s March the largest mass demonstration in U.S. history and one of the largest coordinated global protests in world history. The march got its roots from a Facebook post a few days following the election, and it quickly grew into a revelation. News sites have published that there were three times the number of people at the march than at President Trump’s inauguration.

My father and I drove down the day previous to the march while the inauguration was happening, turning on the radio only to hear Trump’s swearing in and inaugural address. While each of us were in shock by what we were hearing coming from our radio, we both knew that there was no other place we would rather be at that moment, than driving down to protest on Washington.

We arrived late Friday night and slept over at my uncle’s house, who lives just outside of D.C. We woke up early Saturday morning and hit the road at 8:00 a.m., two hours before the rally was scheduled to begin. I was wearing my own t-shirt that read “Hell Yes I’s a Feminist” and my father was wearing a t-shirt, which I had surprised him with earlier that week, that read “This is What a Male Feminist Looks Like.” I was also sporting my very own pink-felt pussy hat that had arrived just in the nick of time, and a matching necklace/earing set with the feminist symbol in the middle. Needless to say, I was really into this and ready to march.

We drove to the Metro station, expecting there to be a surfeit of seats available to us because we were only the fourth stop, 30 minutes out of D.C. We could not have been more wrong; we were packed in the train, and there was an unwritten rule that seats were to be saved for people wearing pussy hats only. I was one of those people; however, I was thankful just to have a place to stand.

It seemed like hours until the Metro arrived at our station, and when it did, every single person on the train piled out at once. Everywhere you looked there were protesters finishing up their signs, handing out signs, handing out bandaids and aspirin, and march volunteers handing out free water. As we were exiting the station, we passed dozens of shops with Trump gear that had failed to sell all of their products the day before. The employees working in the shops were all wearing Hillary buttons and video taping all the women while giving us the thumbs-up sign. I posed for a picture.

As I moved out onto the streets, about to walk three blocks to the rally site, all I could see for miles and miles, as far as the eye could see, were pink pussy hats.

My dad and I walked with a sea of people to the rally site, one hour early, only to find that the entire stage area had been filled to capacity. We had to walk around the crowds to get to the side area next to the stage, only to run into more crowds. We stayed there for a while, screaming along to whatever the crowds were chanting at that time. Among the more popular ones were ¨Hey hey. Ho ho. Trump and Pence have got to go!¨ and ¨Everywhere we go/people want to know/who we are/so we tell them/we are the women/the nasty nasty women/…¨ I felt strangely at home, and it brought about a good feeling to be around so many like-minded people while I was in a state of upset.

Around 1:15 p.m., the women began to march in the streets. We marched from the Capitol, where the inauguration had happened 24 hours earlier, down Independence Avenue to the Washington Monument. There were so many people that the crowd had to split up into three streets, just to be able to move. And, we did move.
My dad and I marched for over two hours before deciding to head out so we could get on a train that wasn’t at full capacity. My feet were hurting, but it was worth it; we sent Trump a message. His first day in office, and millions of people protested against him all over the globe. He knew he lost the popular vote, but we made sure he and his staff really knew.
Many people have asked me why I was marching, and what I thought it would gain. They have said that marching isn’t going to take Trump out of office, and that it was practically pointless.
It is not pointless.

Marching and protesting has gone back to the founding of this country. It is our First Amendment right to assemble and speak our minds. The women’s right to vote came about much earlier because of women suffregette marches from as early as 1913. Weekends are only a reality because the union workers protested and picketed for the eight-hour/five day work week, and I am confident that every child in America appreciates weekends. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the amazing activist that he was because of his speeches and his famous marches in the streets. Marching is a foundation of this country, and while I and the 3 million others of the popular vote understand that marching is not going to take Trump out of office, it is going to get a message across and make a statement that Trump does not represent everyone in America.

My mother is an immigrant; she moved to and became a citizen of the U.S. when she was 17 years old. She grew up in South Africa during Apartheid, and at that time the government had mass control in people’s everyday lives. They were not allowed to watch television because the government feared they would have access to information they didn’t want them to know, and the new flag representing post-Apartheid was banned, so citizens had to discretely smuggle it into the inside-section of their jackets. My mother and grandmother growing up did not have the same First Amendment freedoms as I do now at the age of 14. I consider myself lucky because I know that being able to freely express one’s disliking towards a president is a right in America, but a privilege to so many who have come before me. Because of my knowing of all this, I will never take for granted my right to assemble and my right to protest. President Trump does not represent me or my beliefs, so I let him know that. I have never felt more like an American citizen until the day that I marched on Washington.

The march was a wild success, and I know that we sent a message to our new president, the same way that I know this is not the last time I am ever going to be upset with something that happens in my country. However, I will always exercise my rights, and in the long run, I will be proud to be an American. But until that day comes, I am going to continue to use my voice.