Marcel Winatschek

The Day After

I still think about those photographs from the day after Trump’s inauguration. The Women’s March spread across the country so fast you’d have thought it was inevitable. Crowds too big to see the edges, mostly women but men and kids too, all there to say no to what was coming. The pussy hats were everywhere - those pink knitted things with cat ears, a direct middle finger to the Access Hollywood tape. Crude and perfect because crudeness was honest.

I don’t know what anyone expected to come of it. The administration did what it was going to do anyway. Four years of it. But something about the fact that people showed up that immediately, that creatively - that mattered in some way I can’t quite name. It didn’t stop anything. But there’s something about that moment that stays with you, the fact that people could take shame and turn it into a symbol that fast.