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 the inauguration of Donald Trump as US president. It was prompted by Trump's policy positions and rhetoric, which protesters called misogynistic or otherwise threate ...

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 ...

'' said it was Seattle's largest protest march in history. The march route was from Seattle's Central District through Westlake Park in Downtown Seattle 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 Needle ...

. 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 Co ...

, 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"; 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 ...

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, ...

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: ...

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 (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 i ...

'' 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 Kit ...

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 loc ...

, 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 Hanf ...

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. T ...

, as well as

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the list of cities in Oregon, largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, Columbia rivers, Portland is ...

drew additional thousands of marchers. The event at the state capitol in Olympia had 10,000 attendees. For days, regional knitting shops were sold out of pink yarn used to make pussy hats 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

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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)