Marchers Pour Into Washington to Pour Out Their Hearts

WASHINGTON — They came on buses from Chicago and trains from New York. They flew from Phoenix, Nashville and St. Louis. They drove from all over the East Coast, mobbing rest areas on the New Jersey Turnpike with swarms of pink hats.

Finally arriving in Washington, they found a subway system groaning under their weight, with the lines for SmarTrip cards wrapping up and out of the tunnels as out-of-towners struggled with the machines. Inside the trains, posters were held aloft so more people could squeeze in.

No one seemed to mind. By the time the Women’s March on Washington officially began at 10 a.m., the protesters had arrived in a force so large that they surprised even themselves, spilling over the National Mall and the streets of the capital a day after Donald J. Trump was sworn in as president.

“We came here to add to the numbers,” said Susan P. Willman, a fertility doctor from San Francisco. “I want Trump to hear our message that a lot of people think differently than he does.” 

One of the first speakers was the filmmaker Michael Moore, and when he animatedly stepped to the mike, people leaned in. When he gave everybody a phone number to call Congress, the crowd repeated it back loudly, many smiling and nodding.

“We’re going to be our own lobbyists!” said Maureen Sauer, a 55-year-old insurance company account manager from O’Fallon, Ill.

And when Mr. Moore bellowed that “we need to take over the Democratic Party,” she said to her sister, “That’s what we said!”

People were playful with their signs. There was “Cyborgs for Civility,” and “Women Geologists Rock.” Another said, “1933 Called. Don’t Answer.” A white sign in black marker read: “I know signs. I make the best signs. They’re terrific. Everyone agrees.”

“Can you turn the coat hanger this way?” shouted a woman in a black coat at a woman holding a coat hanger sign, a reference to a dangerous self-abortion technique, near the National Air and Space Museum. “I want to take a picture!”

But there was also seriousness. Mary Robinson, 60, from a rural part of Northern Arizona, said she felt energized by the march, but the work ahead seemed hard.

“I think Trump got it right when he focused on white men in rural communities,” said Ms. Robinson, who said her town was made up almost entirely of Trump supporters. She said she understands them, but feels frustrated at the same time. “They are in rural America where there’s no jobs, no technology, and many people live on government subsidies. It’s not that they are ignorant or stupid, they are just uninformed.”

Around 2 p.m., protesters wedged between the Hirshhorn Museum and the Air and Space Museum were getting restless. They wanted to march, and the talking had gone on an hour past the point anybody expected it to.

“Let’s march! Let’s march!” they chanted.

A woman named Abby had climbed on top of a tall post and was shouting updates.

“Somebody else just started talking,” she shouted, peering over the crowds at the teletron, which was not visible to anybody on the ground.

The crowd booed its disappointment. But then chanted: “Thank you Abby! Thank you Abby!”

The huge turnout — estimated to be at least half a million — overwhelmed the available portable toilets. The marchers looked to nearby shops searching for relief, often finding no luck.

By 3 p.m., the crowd, by now moving, had gotten punchy. Chants kept erupting. “We want a leader, not a creepy tweeter,” people chanted from one part of the crowd, as it inched across the Mall toward the White House.

Just off 15th Street, a block north of the parade’s official end point, a large flatbed float, with big “TRUMP” letters arched along the back, parked itself in the middle of the street, drawing the ire of thousands of marchers, who berated the float with chants of “Shame!” and “We are the popular vote!”

Police officers formed a barricade around the float with more than a half-dozen sidecar motorcycles.

Some marchers kept moving toward the White House, but others started to make their way to Metro stations, rushing back to their buses, trains and lives.

As the sun set on Saturday night in downtown Washington, signs littered the sidewalk and stuck out of trash and recycling bins like broken umbrellas.

Fontella Garraway, a 50-year-old retired Army veteran who drove three and a half hours from Rocky Mount, N.C., sat on a bench staring at the White House. She wore a pin that read “girl power.”

“Even looking at the White House, it’s like I hope he’s looking out here at us,” she said of Mr. Trump. Moments later, she placed a handwritten sign that read “Love trumps hate; Hear our voice” on the fence facing the White House.

“That’s his inauguration gift,” she said.