Donald Trump’s inauguration will be dominated by protests, with dozens of demonstrations planned in DC and across the country.
Although the Women’s March on Washington has dominated the headlines, there are plenty of other protests planned by progressives preparing for the Trump administration – from queer dance parties at Mike Pence’s house to a legal conference with 1,000 lawyers expected.
Here’s your guide to all the inauguration protests.
#Trump420: 20 January
Marijuana advocates in Washington DC will take Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high” slogan literally, handing out 4,200 free joints on the morning of the inauguration.
“It is a historic distribution of marijuana in the nation’s capital,” said Adam Eidinger, 43, co-founder of DCMJ, an activist group that helped lead the 2014 legalization of weed for recreational use in DC.
On the west side of Dupont Circle, DCMJ volunteers will hand out thousands of legal joints – expect two per person, says Eidinger – from 8am.
Then, four minutes and 20 seconds into the Trump presidency, people will be encouraged to light them up.
“This whole process has been about defending the initiative to allow DC to have legal marijuana,” said Eidinger, who says Trump’s attorney general nominee, Jeff Sessions, is the main focus of his protest.
The weed has been grown locally in DC, with Eidinger donating a pound of his own. Volunteers will come to his home to help roll the joints.
The joints will be a combination of two strands: DC Diesel, which is sativa-dominant (one of two species of cannabis plants) and tastes of grapefruit and blue cheese, and Rollex, which won the 2013 Cannabis Cup and has highest THC of any plant Eidinger has tested.
THC is short for tetrahydrocannabinol, the strongest psychoactive chemical in cannabis. Eidinger runs Capitol Hemp, a smoking accessory shop that tests THC levels in homegrown plants and also offers a “bong butler” service to clean bongs.
“THC is what is going to make you feel better about Trump being president, if you didn’t vote for him, because that’s what will make you feel euphoric,” said Eidinger.
DisruptJ20: 14-20 January
A week of scheduled demonstrations, from an LGBT dance party outside Mike Pence’s home in Chevy Chase to a protest of the alt-right’s Deploraball, will make up DisruptJ20.
DisruptJ20 calls itself the “DC counter-inaugural welcoming committee”, and promises a very leftwing week of resistance.
Inauguration protests were planned regardless of who won the election but Trump’s victory saw events and expected attendances increase, said Lacy MacAuley, an organizer for DisruptJ20.
“It took on a whole new meaning and a whole new significance, because I think we are not alone in being concerned about the direction of our country,” said MacAuley, 38.
The week of events leads up to inauguration day, when a “Festival of Resistance” march will walk from Columbus Circle to McPherson Square, where they will meet protesters from the nearby Occupy Inauguration march and hold a rally.
#InaugurateTheResistance
Just a few blocks away, the Answer (“Act now to stop war and end racism”) coalition will host a mass protest on inauguration day at Freedom Plaza, on the corner of 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.
InaugurateTheResistance is calling for a political revolution, fighting against war, militarism, racism, anti-immigrant rhetoric and for workers’ rights.
The Facebook invite notes that many in the Answer coalition hoped Bernie Sanders would lead that revolution, only for his “campaign [to be] largely suppressed”. More than 11,000 people marked themselves on Facebook as attending.
Rise Above Conference: 21-22 January
Lawyers concerned about how Trump’s policies might violate the constitution are demonstrating in the most lawyerly way possible: by holding a conference in DC over inauguration weekend.
“We are a very organized and methodical bunch. What else would you expect?” said Traci Feit Love, founder of Lawyers for Good Government, an organization that started as a Facebook group the day after the election.
Feit Love initially hoped for 200 lawyers to join the group, mostly members of her 2014 Harvard Law class. Within 72 hours, 60,000 people had joined. Now it’s about 130,000, with a survey showing around 80% are practicing lawyers and the rest paralegals, legal secretaries and activists.
The Rise Above conference, co-hosted with RISE When We Fall, will host speakers on voter suppression and the electoral map, panels on protecting civil rights and examining supreme court justice nominations and a performance by Ani Di Franco.
It’s a chance for lawyers to build relationships and infrastructure in advance of likely legal challenges to Trump’s proposed policies such as a Muslim registry, deportations and possible freedom of the press restrictions, said Feit Love, a 39-year-old single mother from Atlanta, Georgia.
“A lot of the policies and proposals [he is] putting out there seem to be contrary to basic values and principles that the American government and experiment, so to speak, is based on,” she said.
We Are Here To Stay: 14 January
The We Are Here To Stay rally will take place this Saturday in DC, deliberately held while Barack Obama is still the president.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen after the inauguration,” Natalia Aristizabal of Make the Road New York, one of the groups behind the rally, told the New York Times.
The DC rally, organized by a collection of pro-immigrant nonprofits, will take place at the Metropolitan AME church from 11am and includes immigrant and refugee speakers. It’s part of a national day of action in support of immigrants and refugees, with rallies held across the country.
In Los Angeles, two pro-immigrant rallies will take place on inauguration day. Their main focus is to call on Trump not to undo the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or Daca, the Obama executive order that protects undocumented immigrants who arrived in the US before their 16th birthday.
Four Women for All Women: 18-21 January
Last year, Alison Mariella Désir’s father died. Désir, 31, had assumed she’d have more time with him.
“This election cycle, I told myself I would do anything to get Hillary Clinton elected into office,” said Désir, an ultra-marathoner. “I did some things here and there. But I told myself, I’ll do more when she’s president. I assumed I had more time. Then, on 8 November, the unexpected happened and, once again, the time I thought I had was just gone.”
Now she’s running from Harlem, New York, to Washington DC with a group of women to raise money for Planned Parenthood. Their goal was $44,000 – they’ve already hit $56,000.
The 252-mile journey is the equivalent of nine marathons. Initially just four women planned to run the distance, but now dozens of women are planning to join them for four-mile stints in a relay that anyone interested can sign up to join.
The run kicks off at 6pm on Wednesday in Harlem and the women will arrive in Washington on Saturday morning, in time to join the Women’s March.
Women’s March on Washington: 21 January
The biggest protest of the inauguration will take place on the Saturday, with at least 200,000 people expected to attend the Women’s March on Washington.
While Trump is struggling to get any A-list stars to perform at his inauguration, the Women’s March has Hollywood heft thanks to singers Cher, Katy Perry and Zendaya, comedians Amy Schumer and Cristela Alonzo, TV host Padma Lakshmi, artist Kara Walker, and actresses Scarlett Johansson, Hari Nef, Amandla Stenberg, Frances McDormand, Uzo Aduba, America Ferrera and Julianne Moore.
Organizers say they are not targeting Trump specifically but rather encouraging support on a range of social justice issues that affect women, from reproductive health to immigration, the environment, LGBTQ rights and stopping racism.
“We must create a society in which women – in particular black women, native women, poor women, immigrant women, Muslim women, and queer and trans women – are free and able to care for and nurture their families, however they are formed, in safe and healthy environments free from structural impediments,” read the march’s unity principles, released on Thursday.
Official partners of the march include the Natural Resources Defense Council, Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union. Gloria Steinem and Harry Belafonte are serving as honorary co-chairs.
The protest kicks off at 10am at the corner of Independence Avenue and Third Street SW, although the final route has yet to be announced. More than 280 independently organized marches will be held in solidarity in all 50 states.
A regularly updated map on the march website allows people to search by zipcode for their nearest event. TV host and comedian Chelsea Handler will host the march in Park City, Utah, which occurs during the Sundance Film Festival.
More than 20 countries will host solidarity marches, with nations including Australia, Canada, Portugal and Mexico and the UK holding events.
Most trains and buses from major cities to DC have been booked out. MarchMatch is a forum for people offering accommodation or transport and those in need of assistance. The Washington Post reports that 1,200 buses have applied for parking permits in DC for the day of the march, compared with just 200 on inauguration day itself.
“All of the eastern seaboard is experiencing huge shortages of available charter buses,” reads the transportation page for the New York chapter of the Women’s March, noting that they currently have no alternative vehicle or travel options available.
In preparation, the Pussyhat Project is calling on people to knit pink woolen hats with little ears – the pattern is available free on its website. The “pussy power” beanies are part of reclaiming the word “pussy” – often used as a derogatory term for female genitalia, not least by Trump himself – and highlighting discrimination, say organizers.
“In order to get fair treatment, the answer is not to take away our pussies, the answer is not to deny our femaleness and femininity, the answer is to demand fair treatment,” reads the Pussy Project mission statement.
