When Rachel Izzo woke up on Saturday morning, she wasn't sure protesting was in the cards. It was chilly, her friend had canceled and it had been a long week at work. But she decided she needed to go.
"I said, If I don't go to this, I'm going to be mad," Izzo admitted, as she gripped a poster of a coat hanger, a longtime symbol of the abortion rights movement. "If I don't show up, I'm going to be just ... sitting back and letting it happen. And I don't want to be a part of that."
She's one of several thousand who protested on the National Mall as part of the People's March, a mobilization put together by a coalition of left-leaning and progressive organizations opposing President-elect Donald Trump's incoming second-term agenda.
It comes nearly eight years after hundreds of thousands came to Washington for the Women's March, just one day after Trump's first inauguration. It stands as the largest single-day protest in U.S. history.
This year, as Democrats and left-leaning voters grapple with the reality of a second Trump term, many are also working through what effective opposition may look like moving forward.
Izzo and multiple protesters and organizers spoke about feeling tired or knowing others in their community who felt resigned following Trump's decisive win in the fall.
It's something that may have played a factor in Saturday's turnout. Organizers told NPR that more than 50,000 attended—a tenth of the crowd seen eight years earlier when half a million people congregated in Washington, D.C., and 4.6 million people marched nationwide.
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