The Women's March on Seattle (stylized as the Womxn's March on Seattle) was the
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
affiliate of the worldwide
2017 Women's March
The Women's March was a worldwide protest on January 21, 2017, the day after Inauguration of Donald Trump, the inauguration of Donald Trump as US president. It was prompted by Trump's policy positions and rhetoric, which protesters called Misog ...
protest on January 21, 2017. Newspapers including ''
The Seattle Times
''The Seattle Times'' is a daily newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 1891 and has been owned by the Blethen family since 1896. ''The Seattle Times'' has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Washington (s ...
'' said it was Seattle's largest protest march in history.
The march route was from Seattle's
Central District through
Westlake Park Westlake Park can mean:
*Westlake Park (Seattle), a park in Seattle, Washington
* MacArthur Park, formerly Westlake Park, in Los Angeles, California
*Westlake Park (Houston)
Westlake Park is a office complex located in the Energy Corridor, Housto ...
in
Downtown Seattle
Downtown is the central business district of Seattle, Washington. It is fairly compact compared with other city centers on the U.S. West Coast due to its geographical situation, being hemmed in on the north and east by hills, on the west by ...
to the
Seattle Center
Seattle Center is an arts, educational, tourism and entertainment center in Seattle, Washington, United States. Spanning an area of 74 acres (30 ha), it was originally built for the 1962 World's Fair. Its landmark feature is the tall Space Needl ...
. Drawing an estimated 120,000 to 175,000 marchers according to police and organizers respectively,
more than the
1999 Seattle WTO protests
The 1999 Seattle WTO protests, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Seattle, were a series of protests surrounding the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, when members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) convened at the Washington State Con ...
, the March filled the entire route through downtown by early afternoon, making vehicle traffic across the route impossible.
It was expected to be the third largest protest march in the United States on January 21, after the
Women's March on Washington (D.C.) and the march in Los Angeles.
An unusual feature of the march is that it was planned to be held in silence.
[
The event was named using the spelling "]womxn
The term ''womxn'' is an alternative spelling of the English word ''woman''. ''Womxn'' has been found in writing since the 1970s, along with the term womyn, to avoid perceived sexism in the standard spelling, which contains the word ''man''.
The ...
"; organizers stated that this naming was meant to symbolize intersectionality
Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of adva ...
with the transgender
A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...
community.
Effects
Sound Transit
Sound Transit (ST), officially the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority, is a public transit agency serving the Seattle metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Washington. It operates the Link light rail system in Seattle and Tacoma, r ...
and King County Metro
King County Metro, officially the King County Metro Transit Department and often shortened to Metro, is the public transit authority of King County, Washington, which includes the city of Seattle. It is the eighth-largest transit bus agency in t ...
rerouted many bus routes and added additional Link light rail
Link light rail is a light rail rapid transit system serving the Seattle metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Washington. It is managed by Sound Transit in partnership with local transit providers, and consists of two non-connected lines: t ...
service in anticipation of disruption to the city's transportation grid.
The march was routed on South Jackson Street through the Chinatown-International District neighborhood, causing major traffic disruptions. Some businesses in the neighborhood reported large losses in sales, taking place in the lead-up to the Lunar New Year
Lunar New Year is the beginning of a calendar year whose months are moon cycles, based on the lunar calendar or lunisolar calendar.
The Lunar New Year as a celebration is observed by numerous cultures. It is also named " Chinese New Year" becau ...
(the largest shopping day of the year in the neighborhood). While restaurants reported good sales, grocery stores that rely on bulk purchases reported losses of up to 65 percent. Prior to the march, business leaders warned that the march would disrupt sales and wrote open letters in the ''International Examiner
The ''International Examiner'' is a free biweekly Asian American newspaper based in Seattle, Washington's International District. It was founded in 1974 by Gerald Yuasa and Lawrence Imamura to serve what the founders thought were the business int ...
'' asking march participants to return to the neighborhood to offset losses.
Participation by people outside of Seattle
Hundreds of participants came to Seattle in organized groups from Eastside cities including Sammamish
Sammamish ( ) is a city in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 67,455 at the 2020 census. Located on a plateau, the city is bordered by Lake Sammamish to the west and the Snoqualmie Valley to the east. Sammamish is a resid ...
and Kirkland by charter bus, the Kitsap Peninsula
The Kitsap Peninsula () lies west of Seattle across Puget Sound, in Washington state in the Pacific Northwest. Hood Canal separates the peninsula from the Olympic Peninsula on its west side. The peninsula, a.k.a. "Kitsap", encompasses all of Kits ...
by Washington State Ferries
Washington State Ferries (WSF) is a government agency that operates automobile and passenger ferry service in the U.S. state of Washington as part of the Washington State Department of Transportation. It runs ten routes serving 20 terminals loca ...
, and other Washington locales.
Other Pacific Northwest marches
Other events in Twisp, Spokane, Yakima and Walla Walla in Eastern Washington
Eastern Washington is the region of the U.S. state of Washington located east of the Cascade Range. It contains the city of Spokane (the second largest city in the state), the Tri-Cities, the Columbia River and the Grand Coulee Dam, the Hanfor ...
and numerous cities in Western Washington
Western Washington is a region of the United States defined as the area of Washington state west of the Cascade Mountains. This region is home to the state's largest city, Seattle, the state capital, Olympia, and most of the state's residents. The ...
, as well as Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...
drew additional thousands of marchers. The event at the state capitol in Olympia
The name Olympia may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Film
* ''Olympia'' (1938 film), by Leni Riefenstahl, documenting the Berlin-hosted Olympic Games
* ''Olympia'' (1998 film), about a Mexican soap opera star who pursues a career as an athlet ...
had 10,000 attendees. For days, regional knitting shops were sold out of pink yarn used to make pussy hat
A pussyhat is a pink, crafted hat, created in large numbers by women involved with the United States 2017 Women's March. They are the result of the Pussyhat Project, a nationwide effort initiated by Krista Suh and Jayna Zweiman, a screenwriter ...
s crafted and worn by the protestors.
File:2017 Women's March at Olympia.jpg, State capitol in Olympia
Endorsements
The Seattle march was endorsed by Washington's senior United States senator, Patty Murray
Patricia Lynn Murray (; born October 11, 1950) is an American politician and educator who is the senior United States senator from Washington since 1993. A member of the Democratic Party, Murray was in the Washington State Senate from 1988 to ...
, who said she would be physically present at the D.C. event. The King County AFL–CIO
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) is the largest federation of unions in the United States. It is made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 12 million ac ...
chapter officially participated in the event. The mayor of Seattle, Ed Murray, marched.
References
External links
*
Seattle Womxn Marching Forward
{{Portal bar, Feminism
2017 in Seattle
2017 in women's history
2017 protests
January 2017 events in the United States
Protest marches
Protests against Donald Trump
Protests against results of elections
Protests in Seattle
Women's March
Women's marches in the United States
History of women in Washington (state)