Political scientists Jeremy Pressman and Erica Chenoweth, respectively of the University of Connecticut and the University of Denver, compiled a massive spreadsheet listing nearly 700 protests around the world, ranging in size from hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Washington, DC, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago to a single person in Show Low, Arizona and Pence, Wisconsin. Protests took place on all seven continents — including Antarctica, with between 3.1 million and 4.6 million marchers taking to the streets in the United States alone. As many as 300,000 international marchers also took part in Saturday’s protests.
“Even using a conservative estimate, it was the single largest day for a demonstration in the U.S.,” Chenoweth, an expert on political protests and civil resistance, told Vox. Saturday’s actions also ranked among the biggest protests in human history. The Independent reports the Women’s March drew more than 10 times as many participants as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic 1963 march on Washington, but fell short of the global protests against the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 (estimated 8 million participants) and the French demonstrations following the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in 2015 (estimated 4.4. million participants).
There were protests in all 50 states on Saturday. The largest demonstration took place in Washington, DC, where between half a million and 680,000 people marched, in a city with a total population of 660,000. According to crowd scientists at Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain, the crowd was roughly three times the size of the audience at President Trump’s inauguration a day earlier. The Los Angeles protest also drew hundreds of thousands of participants, with event organizers estimating the crowd at as many as 750,000. In New York, around half a million people protested. Between 100,000 and 250,000 people marched in Boston, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Seattle and London, and between 50,000 and 100,000 were estimated in Atlanta, Austin, Madison, Oakland, Philadelphia, Portland, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Toronto.
On the smaller side, half the entire town of Stanley, Idaho (population 63) braved a winter snowstorm to stand in solidarity with women across the nation and around the world against Trump. Speaking of wintry weather, around 30 travelers to Antarctica, including an 87-year-old woman, held a protest, with one sign reading “penguins march for peace.” One-person protests occurred in Conover, WI, Crestone, CO, Gila, NM, Grants Pass, OR, Pence, WI, Show Low, AZ and West Lima, WI. The smallest international events on Saturday saw eight people rally in Erbil, Iraq, five demonstrators in Isla Mujeres, Mexico, four people in Maadi Degla, Egypt one protester in Manutoulin Island, Canada and one person in Oranjestad, Aruba.
There were no arrests reported at any U.S. demonstrations.
