Barbara Bernstein, of Potomac, and Chris Nickerson, a friend from Boston, stop for coffee and sandwiches on their way to the Women's March in Washington Saturday. Photo by Peggy McEwan
There were plenty of pink hats in Potomac Saturday morning as women, girls and men grabbed coffee and sandwiches before heading to Washington for the Women’s March.
The purpose of the March, according to womensmarch.com, was to signal to the Trump administration “… and to the world that women’s rights are human rights. We stand together, recognizing that defending the most marginalized among us is defending all of us.”
Barbara Bernstein of Potomac and seven others including friends from Boston, her husband and children were headed into D.C. to make their opinions known.
She was marching for many issues, she said, but most importantly for tolerance.
“I have two gay children, one graduating from college” she said. “Places can discriminate and now they feel emboldened. We had the most qualified person to ever run for president run against a man who told us the size of his penis in the debates.”
Bernstein knit seven pink hats for her group to wear and even sent one to her sister in Paris, who was marching there.
“I knit so many hats I have a callus on my finger,” she said.
The hat she knit for friend Chris Nickerson was more mauve than pink. That was not because she was less committed to the cause than others, Bernstein said, it was because local shops ran out of pink yarn.
“I’m horrified by Trump,” she said.
Hans Hogrefe, of Washington, D.C. sat outside Vie de France sipping a hot drink, before going to the march. He was taking his 14-year-old daughter.
“She was very interested in going,” he said. “But I also wanted her to go. I think it’s a very good time, I want her to practice her right as a citizen.”
Linda Rieger, who lives is River Falls, was not able to go to the march because of an eye injury. She did go to a civil rights training meeting in Vienna, Va. on Friday.
“The point is that those [trained] now have the knowledge to continue their fight for the issues they are concerned with … mostly it is social justice and the freedom of press and holding their local governments accountable …. All of these groups are now watching what is going to happen and they will be ready to hold the Trump administration accountable.”
Rieger is hopeful that Trump will listen to many voices even those who disagree with him.
“Trump says that he is the great negotiator. To be a negotiator you have to understand all sides and be trusted to follow through with his promises to be the president for all Americans and the leader of the free world,” she wrote. “He desperately wants to be successful and all should hope that he will be.”
Katherine Dwyer, a Potomac teenager, said she wanted to go to the march but was not sure she could.
“I want to go,” she said. “I don’t believe the decisions this country has made are positive for the future.”
Heather Lambert, of Ithaca, N.Y., whose parents live in Potomac, and her cousin Hannah Gard, from Kocomo, Ind., went to the march together.
“It was awesome,” Lambert said. “People were positive. There were men, women, people of every color and race. I liked it, it was very sophisticated.”
She said she marched for a number of issues: climate control and reproductive rights were on the top of her list.
“We should have rights for our bodies,” she said.
Gard said she did not march for any one issue. She too was impressed with the march.
Her impression of the day was how peaceful it was.
“It was everyone standing together,” she said.