As around 500,000 people, many wearing knitted pink hats, marched in Washington, D.C., to demonstrate their support for women’s rights, around 500 “sister marches” unfolded in cities worldwide to show solidarity.
Canada
In Toronto, Canada’s biggest city, around 30,000 people, according to police estimates, turned out to march past the U.S. consulate and show their defiance of the new Trump administration. “Standing With Our American Sisters,” “Hate, You’re Fired” and “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun-damental Human Rights” were among the placards held aloft by the demonstrators.
At one point, a police cordon led a pregnant woman suddenly in labor into the Mount Sinai Hospital, a stone’s throw from the heavily guarded U.S. consulate. Other marches took place in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax.
Mexico
In Mexico City, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the U.S. Embassy to demand respect for women’s rights in an act of worldwide solidarity. Later in the day, the LGBT community staged a march along tree-lined Reforma Avenue, headed to downtown Mexico City.
At a Friday anti-Trump march in the nation’s capital, protesters burned Trump pinatas and a cardboard representation of a border wall.
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Prague
In Prague, an estimated 700 women and men gathered in the Czech capital’s famous Wenceslas Square to listen to speeches and vow opposition to misogyny and hate. The action was peaceful, and those gathered listened to speeches and music from a podium at the top of the square, near the Czech National Museum.
Nancy Bishop, a Prague-based American casting director who helped organize the action, told The Hollywood Reporter: “This is the beginning! Today, a new organization was born. Love prevails.”
Budapest
In Budapest, the Hungarian capital, women and men under clear blue skies linked arms to cross the city’s famous 19th century Chain Bridge to illustrate the theme of the march, “Build Bridges, Not Walls.” Many carried homemade placards stating things like “Though She Be Little, She Is Fierce” and “Peaceful, Powerful and Wise.”
Pristina
In Pristina, capital of the largely Muslim former Yugoslav republic of Kosovo, a few hundred protestors, mostly women, joined a protest against the new Trump administration. Activist Igballe Rugova, from the Network of Women’s Rights Organizations, which organized the action, said the U.S. was a powerful and important country and that the language used by Trump against women and other groups during his campaign had a worldwide impact.
Australia, New Zealand
Protests in Australia and New Zealand kicked off the worldwide Women’s Marches on Saturday mere hours after President Trump’s inauguration. Organizers in Sydney drew estimates of 3,000 to 10,000 people to peacefully walk from Hyde Park in the city center to the U.S. consulate.
Police estimated another 3,500 to 5,000 people marched in Melbourne, while smaller marches were held in Brisbane and Canberra. Sydney Women’s March organizer Dr. Mindy Freiband expressed pride in Sydney “for speaking up. We don’t live in an isolated world. We don’t want to see nationalist agendas. We want a global agenda with women’s rights high up.”
New Zealand launched the first of the post-inauguration marches with protesters turning out in Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin, Christchurch and Invercargill.
Antarctica
The protest to the Trump inauguration extended to the seventh continent as a band of 30 people on board an unnamed research ship at Paradise Bay in Antarctica showed solidarity with the global Women’s Marches. Activist Linda Zunas said their protest aimed to draw attention to environmental protection and world peace, as well as politics.
John Hecht in Mexico City, Nick Holdsworth in Moscow and Pip Bulbeck in Sydney contributed to this report.
