A few hundred protesters marched to Trump Tower Sunday as part of nationwide Women’s March events in honor of International Women’s Day, celebrated March 8.
Protesters gathered in the Loop’s Daley Plaza and came wielding signs with references to abortion, immigration, the war in Iran and women’s rights.
“International Women’s Day matters because women have never been handed justice,” Jane Ruby, the president of the League of Women Voters of Chicago, said to attendees. “Women have organized for it, marched for it, demanded it, won it and still, we are fighting.”
The event began with speeches from local activists, elected officials and candidates running for office. They spoke of the importance of women advocating for equality under the Trump administration and to vote in upcoming elections, including the Illinois primary election on March 17.
Speakers also called for an end to violence abroad in Iran and Palestine, and at home in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers. Some, like Precious Brady-Davis, mentioned specific legislation activists say is holding women back — for example, a bill in Kansas that invalidated driver’s licenses and birth certificates for transgender Kansans and paves the way for further anti-transgender lawsuits, advocates say.
Brady-Davis is a commissioner for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, making her the first Black and openly transgender woman serving as an elected official in Cook County. She said she hopes for a future where her two daughters know they can be anything they want to be.
“I want them to know that Mom is on the front lines today, and I don’t want the kids to be on the front lines until they have to,” Brady-Davis said to the crowd. “I don’t want those little girls losing their innocence. I want them to know that there are people who will continue to stand in the gap for them.”
Autumn Pierce, 51, came to the protest from her home in West Humboldt Park with a homemade sign of pictures of women who have fought for equal rights for themselves and others across the globe, like Rosa Parks and Sophie Scholl.
“I just wanted to come out and honor them in hope that when it comes down to it, I’ll be able to do the right thing when called upon,” Pierce said.
After an hour of speeches, the protestors began marching north on Dearborn Street. They chanted “Chicago is a protest town,” as they walked.
Jane Nicholson, a 78-year-old who lives in the Loop, said she’s been coming to International Women’s Day marches for decades. Nicholson said the country needs to take large actions against the Trump administration, and it’s important to her that women participate in that fight, especially on International Women’s Day.
“We’re underrepresented (and) under-respected,” Nicholson said.