Sources: Yahoo! Movies, Yahoo! Music
More than 4,000 women and men converged Saturday morning on Main Street in Park City, Utah, for a sister march and rally calling for the respect of human rights in the face of a Donald Trump presidency.
Brandishing signs that read “Make America Compassionate Again” and “We Live in Trumpled Times,” the crowd, roughly half female, braved the snow and 22 degree temperatures. Chelsea Handler, who was inspired to organize a march thanks to a Hollywood Reporter article that addressed how Sundance’s notoriously liberal festgoers would mark Trump’s presidential inauguration, led the procession that snaked through the heart of Park City.
Matthew Belloni
The Women’s March on Main coincided with a massive Washington sister march as well as some 350 similar events taking place in all 50 states as well as 20 countries around the world. Joining Handler on the dais in Park City were speakers Aisha Tyler, Connie Britton, Benjamin Bratt, Maria Bello and An Inconvenient Sequel executive producer Laurie David.
“Hello, all you pussies!” Bello said as she addressed the crowd. “When they punch you in the pussy, punch ’em back with your pussy power.”
Ashley Lee
Spotted in the crowd was producer Jason Blum, marching with his 20-month-old daughter Roxy. “This is her first march ever,” he told THR. “She might be the youngest marcher here.”
David Linde, CEO of Participant Media, added, “I’m marching here in solidarity with all of my family and friends who are marching today in Washington and New York.”
John Legend joined the swarm of protesters, whose shouts of “I’m With Her!,” “Love Trumps Hate!” and “Misogyny Has Got to Go!” rang out.
George Pimentel/Getty Images
The Eating Establishment, situated along the route, passed out free coffee to marchers, which included Charlize Theron, Laura Dern, Mary McCormack, Sundance Institute’s Keri Putnam and festival director John Cooper, attorneys Linda Lichter and Jamie Feldman and WME’s Marie Sheehy. Underground stars Aldis Hodge and Jurnee Smollett-Bell, as well as Marianna Palka, director of festival film Bitch, also marched.
“There’s an assault right now on bodies of color and their rights,” filmmaker Kimberly Peirce said at the rally. “We all have to look out for Muslim bodies. We have to protect all bodies.”
In an impassioned speech, Jessica Williams drew laughs from the crowd. “I am my ancestors’ dream. They fought for me to stand up here in the cold-ass snow in front of a bunch of white people with Uggs,” she said.
Ashley Lee
Ashley Lee
Tyler and Britton led the crowd in an oath, asking them to raise their right hands and pledge: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute my role as an American and I will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. And vote.”
When the crowd got out of step with the oath at one point, Tyler joked, “Progressives can never do anything all at the same time.”
Park City Police Department estimated the crowd to be more than 4,000. No arrests were reported to have been made. One officer said, “This is a very peaceful crowd.”
Funding for the Women’s March on Main came from Planned Parenthood of Utah, Justice Party, Summit County Democrats, Equality Now, Alliance for a Better Utah, EMILY’S List, Sentry Financial and Impact Partners Film.
Shortly after the march ended on Saturday afternoon, organizer Handler and McCormack posted a lengthy joint message on Medium, explaining their participation in the rally.
“We’re all here for the same reason … to stand with hundreds of thousands of women to demonstrate respect for our freedom, human rights, safety and health. … Otherwise known as ‘Things We Thought We Were Done Marching For, But Apparently We’re Not,'” the post reads. “We experienced a setback, but the only thing you can do when you’ve been set back is to step forward and continue to fight.”
The post goes on to explain that part of that fight includes standing by Planned Parenthood, an institution “synonymous with the health and safety of millions of women across the nation.”
“If there is a silver lining to be found regarding this past election, it’s that it opened our eyes to the amount of work that still needs to be done. If the election had gone the other way, maybe we would have all grown complacent. Maybe we would have all thought, ‘Well, the ultimate glass ceiling has been shattered, nothing left to do here,'” Handler and McCormack wrote. “But, instead, we got a wake up call. What happened didn’t just open our eyes – it slapped us across the face. Now we’re awake … and more galvanized, focused and motivated to fight.”
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