People gathering at Judkin's Park
I can only give the view that I had — one person out of at least 130,000. I have talked with many others who have their own unique viewpoint depending on how they jumped in. Seattle isn’t a city that lends itself to massive demonstrations and marches. We often gather at Westlake Park, which holds about 5,000 max, or else find civic spaces to collect larger groups and march.
The decision of the city was to start at Judkins Park, about 3.6 miles from the end point, Seattle Center, which is a very large space and can handle the crowd. Judkins Park was a challenge for many people to get to by transit, and this was the first lovely story of the day. Metro did everything they could to get people moved, adding buses and light rail runs, sending out updates and alerts to give people evolving information. Our bus filled up with one stop and it was already a festive atmosphere. Here is a bus picture:
bus party
Judkin’s Park was mobbed, although since it is big, there was room to move around. I roamed, taking pictures and talking with people. I had a sign with pictures of my four grandkids and the words “Their World is Up to US”, which started a number of conversations (and out of one of those conversations I ended up putting it together for the first time that not one, but three of those kids will be voting in 2020, yay). Here are some other signs I liked:
What I loved: seeing so many kids and families; seeing so much creativity in costume and signage; seeing so many men in obvious support; wearing lots of pink, including being willing to look silly in the cause, carrying signs challenging patriarchy. Striking up conversations; starting to get the sense that this was ballooning way beyond expectations.
My dear friend Jan
We couldn’t distinctly hear the speakers, but the crowd began to move. Very slowly, given how swollen that park was with people. It took about an hour to go three blocks and we still weren’t to the main march, so we did a little creative crowd control and bypassed the slow feed from the park and joined the main march further on. it was gay and wonderful and at that point sunny.
I loved the one just above, about all of us being seeds, because they are surely trying to bury us.
We started to see how huge this march was, hearing about how many were still leaving Judkins Park and hearing how many were already at Seattle Center. There were two downtown entry points for those who couldn’t march 3.6 miles and a lot of seniors were knew were doing that. So the march stretched all 3.6 miles for some part of that time. We found out at the end that the police had talked with the organizers about doing what they did in Chicago, shutting down the marching part of it and having the rally part because of these difficult logistics of moving 130,000 through the narrow streets of downtown Seattle. But they didn’t push it and it wasn’t changed and the atmosphere was so friendly and connected through several downtown streets, because marchers were on lots of feeder and parallel streets the whole time (which I why I believe the actual number is higher — it seemed we were everywhere, not just on the route). Police blocking roads for us were friendly and one policewoman was going out of her way to give heads up to people’s signs.
We got to Seattle Center eventually and people were again everywhere, but there wasn’t any focal point, so it turned into whatever kind of party marchers were up for. We are 71 and 77, so were up for the sitting down in a chair kind of party. Ran into some folks we knew and then that was it.
Mission completed…..for today.
