More than 1,000 activists, students and community leaders rallied in Washington Square Park Saturday morning in honor of International Women’s Day, advocating for gender equality amid the Trump administration’s rollback of reproductive rights, gender-affirming health care and equal employment policies. 

The “Womxn’s March,” organized by a conglomerate of local feminist groups, kicked off with a series of speeches from organizers, including decades-long activist Leslie Cagan and Executive Director of the Chosen Family Law Center Diana Adams. Speakers condemned President Donald Trump’s stance on abortion and transgender rights, and called for increased advocacy for women affected by international conflicts and border restrictions. 

Protesters intermittently chanted “Love not hate makes America great” and “Donald Trump go away, racist, sexist, anti-gay,” and held signs reading “DESTROY THE PATRIARCHY NOW” and “ABORTION SAVES LIVES.” Since Women’s Day marches became an annual event in 1977, participation has steadily grown — although numbers saw a notable spike this year and in 2017, when Trump took office for his first term. 

“We need to be out in the streets today defending our rights in order to uphold what feminists for decades have been fighting for,” Barney Riley, president of NYU’s Feminist Society, told WSN. “I feel so encouraged by past generations to keep on fighting and to inspire future generations.”

Riley and several other members of the Feminist Society attended and promoted the march, alongside Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, the Canadian Labour Congress and dozens of local groups. The march was one of hundreds worldwide, with similar demonstrations taking place across Europe, Africa and South America. 

At around noon, protesters left the park to march in the street up University Place toward Union Square, chanting “This is what democracy looks like” and “The people united will never be divided.” Speakers led the group carrying a sign that read “WOMEN OF THE WORLD UNITE,” and a few dozen New York City Police Department officers surrounded the group as they walked. 

Washington Square Park has historically been a site for women’s rights and other modes of political activism. After the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911 — which took place just one block east of the park — thousands of people gathered in the park to advocate for labor laws. This sparked women’s rights activists to flock to Washington Square Park for protests and rallies for over a century since. 

“It’s right in the center of the youth, and that’s what we need,” Terri Coleram, a participant in the protest, told WSN. “Some of the protesters are the older people — the hippie generation, if you will — and we’re old now. It’s up to you guys to take the baton and really open your mouth and own it.”

As hundreds crowded Union Square, the demonstrators chanted and gathered behind a platform of banners and loudspeakers. At around 12:30 p.m., another set of organizers addressed the group — starting with Sunsara Taylor, co-initiator of Refuse Fascism. 

Taylor discussed the intersections of feminism with other movements, arguing that women’s issues coincide with those faced by other marginalized communities, especially under the Trump administration. She also said that the rally sought to represent a range of political beliefs, from anti-capitalist approaches like her own to those who more generally disapprove of Trump’s policies. 

“Every revolutionary has to make a fight for women’s liberation a central part of what they do,” Carl Dix, another speaker at the event, said in an interview with WSN. “We have to break free from everything foul about this system — and the degradation of women is a part of that.”

Dix is a founding member of the Revcom and has participated in more than 40 International Women’s Day protests. As one of the first men to openly refuse military deployment to Vietnam in the 1970s, he said constant mobilization and growing resistance movements is the only vehicle to substantive change. 

While many demonstrators emphasized an integrative approach to feminism, certain issues were notably at the forefront. Hundreds of signs and apparel at the march specifically called to expand reproductive rights and protested the Trump administration’s vocal efforts to limit access to abortion. 

“It is the threat and the insult that hangs over the life and the dreams of every single woman, every single girl who is told by this fascist state that her life, her dreams, her ambitions, her future, count for nothing,” Taylor said in her speech. “She is nothing more than a baby making machine.”

Since the Trump-appointed Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, eliminating national protections for abortion, Trump and his allies have expanded his calls for states to limit their reproductive health care offerings. Most recently, the Trump administration moved to drop a Biden-administration lawsuit against Idaho’s total abortion ban, allowing the state to enforce the law in emergency medical cases. 

Several speakers also condemned Trump’s crackdown on transgender rights, citing heightened concern surrounding suicide rates for LGBTQ+ youth. Jo DiNozzi, an organizer with TQVoices, also told WSN that the new administration’s policies restricting what gender identities are listed on drivers licenses, passports and other forms of identification subjects trans people to hate crimes and worsened mental health. 

“For a lot of trans people, passing is safety,” DiNozzi said. “Unfortunately, because we are such a small part of the population — there is only around 1.5% of the population that is gender nonconforming — people think that they can sacrifice us if it means the rest of their agenda can be saved.”

At the end of January, Trump issued an executive order demanding that all medical centers cease gender-affirming care for patients under the age of 19. Three days later, NYU Langone Health reportedly denied such care to two 12-year-olds and briefly paused scheduling new appointments, before it returned to usual offerings around a week later. 

The demonstration hosted live bands, who performed between speeches. It also featured the Raging Grannies, a group of women who regularly sing at demonstrations across the city. In an interview with WSN, Trudy Silver, a member of the group, said growing up as a musician inspired by the civil rights movement taught her to integrate the two interests.

“I can’t bring my grand piano out here,” Silver told WSN, following her four-number act at the rally. “But we’re doing our best.”

Since Trump was elected, thousands have gathered in lower Manhattan to protest the Trump administration’s move to pull research funding, crackdown on immigration and stance on international conflicts. At the same time, NYU has seen repeated calls from students to bolster its responses to the new administration and commit to supporting international students, keeping its diversity programming and speaking out against Trump. 

“You have to push back on things you know are unjust,” DiNozzi said. “If they learn they can get away with something without resistance, they are not gonna stop.”

Contact Dharma Niles and Lekhya Kantheti at [email protected].