By Gina Martinez
New York City is holding its own Women’s March this Saturday.
The march will be a counterpart to the Women’s March on Washington the same day, which is expected to draw around 200,000 marchers. The Women’s March on New York City, organized by The Human First Society, will begin at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza at East 48th Street and First Avenue at 11 a.m. and end at Trump Tower on 57th Street and Fifth Avenue.
The society’s website says the purpose of the march is “to provide a safe and accepting platform for supporters of equality to rally and march in promotion of civil rights for every human regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability, religion or creed.”
According to the official Facebook page for the march, 37,000 people have signed up so far to participate. The page said everyone is invited to participate, no matter which political party, gender, or religion they belong to.
The march has multiple sponsors, including The Center for the Women of New York, based in Kew Gardens. Ann Jawin, founder of the center, said she has more than 100 women registered to march with her nonprofit. The center has designed burgundy sashes for participants to wear that are reminiscent of the suffragettes, who took to the streets to march for women’s right to vote.
Jawin said she has been planning this march since just days after Donald Trump’s election as president in November.
“We were very disappointed,” she said. “But the way I see it, feeling down-hearted, disappointed and pessimistic doesn’t help. As soon as you get involved and do something positive, it’s healing instead of feeling down. In the first few days after his election when I thought about working on the march, I felt a lot better. We were all very positive and excited and that’s the ways it has to be, you keep working.”
Jawin said movements like this are necessary to battle oppression.
“The women’s movement, civil rights movement, they don’t happen right away — it takes years,” she said. “The women’s movement took 100 years, and we’re still fighting to protect what we won, so we have to take the long view. When you have centuries of oppression, you can’t do away with it in a minute. You have to keep educating and fighting.”
Anyone interested in marching with the Center for the Women’s of New York can email Jawin at cente
Reach Gina Martinez by e-mail at gmart
