Demonstrators gather at the Ellipse after The Women’s March on November 2, 2024 in Washington, D.C. Photo by Kent Nishimura | Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump once again won a presidential election. Again, his opponent was a highly qualified woman. And again, intense rhetoric about gender and race defined his candidacy.
But for many who find themselves thinking about what it means to mobilize against MAGA, this moment feels very different from Trump’s first win in 2016. Then, it was pink pussyhats and the Women’s March, loud calls for public action and visible outcry. Today, progressive leaders and policy experts say, things feel quieter, more contemplative, more focused on practical, on-the-ground community action — even as women, people of color, and queer people face real fears about their futures in light of a second Trump presidency.
A People’s March on Washington is planned for January before Trump’s inauguration by the same organizers of the original Women’s March in 2017. For some, this kind of public action doesn’t feel like an answer. March organizers, however, stress the need to mark the moment with some kind of highly visible collective action.
The organizing team behind the Women’s March and People’s March sees its work as much more holistic than a single headline-grabbing event. Many people who come to Women’s March events have never organized or protested, but want to do something to get involved, said Tamika Middleton, managing director at Women’s March.
“There is no lower barrier of entry than making a sign and coming to the march. There’s no easier way to get involved and to get activated,” Middleton said. “It is an entry point for new people. And then we keep organizing after the marches.”
The 2017 Women’s March drew about 4 million people to demonstrations around the world. Speakers included celebrities like America Ferrera, Scarlett Johansson and Ashley Judd, in addition to big-name activists like Gloria Steinem.
The Women’s March team, which is primarily women of color, said it has evolved their approach since 2017. In renaming its pre-inauguration march to the People’s March, the group seeks to build a big tent where people of different backgrounds feel welcome to participate. The team is also thinking about how they can capitalize on moments of mass mobilization and extend it beyond protests. This includes connecting people who are new to organizing with local efforts they can get involved with and training them on things like combatting online disinformation, Middleton said. They have also developed “women’s protection teams” to help people assess threats of political violence and develop early intervention strategies.
But other observers fear repeating the same playbook from 2017.
“We can’t keep doing the same thing and expect a different outcome,” said Staci Fox, a longtime leader of progressive policy and advocacy groups in Atlanta. In 2017, Fox was a speaker at the satellite Women’s March event held in Atlanta while the head of a reproductive rights organization based there.
Today Fox is angry. Democratic losses up and down the ballot in Georgia last week are weighing heavily on her as she thinks about what the future may look like for marginalized people in the state. Fox hopes that organizers and policy strategists alike will take time to reevaluate: not only how they message to voters, but how they develop meaningful, community-based actions that are poised to best serve, and help protect, marginalized communities who are facing the greatest potential threats under a second Trump term.
She’s involved in conversations in her community about passport fairs and other forms of documentation review for transgender people before Trump is sworn into office again. One thing she does know for sure is that she won’t be attending the second People’s March in Washington, D.C. She sees it as something that can make people, especially White women, feel like they’ve done something without having any real impact.
“I definitely think we’ve got to do away with performative activism,” Fox, a White woman, said of what the best next steps are for those working to shape progressive organizing.
As liberal advocacy groups brace for the next administration, they also feel better positioned to prepare for what’s next. One of Trump’s most notable achievements was his appointment of federal judges, including three Supreme Court justices who were key to overturning federal abortion protections in 2022. While he has stated that he does not see a reason to pass a national abortion ban, many experts and reproductive rights advocates worry that his administration could move to restrict access to abortion in other ways.
For many abortion groups around the country, the work remains the same. In Texas, which has a total abortion ban, the Texas Equal Access (TEA) Fund told The 19th it is training volunteers to support clients searching for abortions. They are teaching them ways of responding to medical distrust in communities of color, challenging misleading information from anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers,” and the specifics of legislative efforts to increase abortion protections. TEA Fund said that since Election Day, it has seen more than 80 volunteer applications when it typically receives one or two per week.
The National Women’s Law Center, which previously sued the Trump administration on issues ranging from pay data collection to the Education Department’s changes to Title IX rules, is gearing up for more assaults on reproductive rights, said Emily Martin, the center’s chief program officer. Martin also said that they expect one of the first big fights of Trump’s administration to be around tax policy and tax cuts for billionaires and wealthy corporations.
“Maybe the sense of shock is different this time around, but what I am seeing from partners and from the broader public is a deep understanding of the stakes and the need to engage because the stakes are so high,” Martin said. “We’re all coming having learned lessons from the first time around, but one of the lessons we have learned is the seriousness of what’s before us.”
The progressive Working Families Party will be looking out for Trump’s immigration policies. During his first term, Trump implemented a temporary travel ban on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries and used family separation as a deterrent for undocumented immigrants, which resulted in more than 5,000 migrant children being separated from their families. Trump has promised to begin a push for mass deportations from Day 1 of his second term.
Jennifer Knox, organizing director of the Working Families Party, said she believes organizing work since 2017 has matured as advocates become more intentional about their work — from being selective about the actions they take to ensuring that they reach groups outside of White college-educated, middle-class people.
“I think that people are interested not just in being in a reactive space and doing the same playbook as 2016 but trying to figure out how to fight for the long term and how to be more successful,” Knox said.
Taylor Salditch, the executive director of Supermajority, a group that organizes young low-propensity voters around progressive issues, said she also thinks now is the time for listening and not reacting.
“Rest is important. Going slow is important. Taking our time is important,” she said.
While many progressive groups are engaged in finger-pointing about what issues, messages, strategies and demographics are to blame for Democrats’ losses last week, Salditch said that conversation doesn’t actually help protect those who stand to be most impacted by what’s to come in the second Trump term.
In lieu of large public displays, she would like to see more time outlining what Democrats see as their needs and goals before midterms in 2026. Salditch hopes that people act with “compassion and curiosity and fundamentally a belief that people are good and worthy” as Democrats think about how to rebuild their coalition.
From where she sits, Salditch said that one major consideration needs to be that young women cannot by default be assumed to be the Democratic base — especially without investment by the larger progressive ecosystem in reaching them as voters. The party may also consider what messaging to women as a demographic means beyond focusing on “mom” as an identity.
Salditch said what feels more necessary right now is the understanding that when it comes to talking to and about women, diversity of thought — and issues — matters.
“If you are reaching for contempt over curiosity, you’re doing bad organizing,” Salditch said.