Thousands of Masked Women Hit the Streets

'We are the hell and high water,' an activist says
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Oct 17, 2020 3:30 PM CDT
Thousands of Masked Women Hit the Streets
A demonstrator wears a Ruth Bader Ginsberg face mask during a Women's March rally outside the New York Stock Exchange, Saturday, Oct. 17, 2020, in New York.   (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Thousands of mostly young women in masks rallied Saturday in the nation's capital and other US cities, exhorting voters to oppose President Trump and his fellow Republican candidates in the Nov. 3 elections, the AP reports. The latest of rallies that began with a massive women’s march the day after Trump's January 2017 inauguration was playing out during the coronavirus pandemic, and demonstrators were asked to wear face coverings and practice social distancing. Rachel O'Leary Carmona, executive director of the Women’s March, opened the event by asking people to keep their distance from one another, saying that the only superspreader event would be the recent one at the White House. She talked about the power of women to end Trump's presidency.

"His presidency began with women marching and now it’s going to end with woman voting. Period," she said. Dozens of other rallies were planned from New York to San Francisco to signal opposition to Trump and his policies, especially the push to fill the seat of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before Election Day. In one of several speeches at the Washington rally, Sonja Spoo, a reproductive-rights activist, said she chuckles when reporters ask Trump whether he will accept a peaceful transfer of power if he loses. "When we vote him out, come Nov. 3, there is no choice," she said. "Donald Trump will not get to choose whether he stays in power. That is not his power, that is our power. ... We are the hell and high water."

(More female voters stories.)

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