Chicago’s fourth Women’s March will kick off next Saturday with local leaders — including Mayor Lori Lightfoot, congresswomen Robin Kelly and Jan Schakowsky, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza, planning to honour and assist marchers with disabilities, Chicago Tribune reports.
Organizers say it’s a way of ensuring all participants, not just the able-bodied folks, can focus on the issues on the table at this year’s march — specifically the 2020 census, climate justice, gun violence prevention, health care access and voting — rather than worrying about how to navigate the route and the crowds.
Organizers planned for 50,000 people; a quarter million showed. The following year, in 2018 the participants were 300 000.
Last year, organizers staged a series of activists rallies in January in and around the city instead of a formal march. Saturday’s event marks a return to the traditional format.
The first march happened when activists around the world asked people to flood their streets the day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration as a show of force in the face of threats to reproductive and civil rights and as a protest to his treatment of women. No one knew how many people would participate. More than 3 million did.
