A Mile of Women March
January 19, 2019
It’s 9 a.m. in Civic Center Park on Saturday Jan. 19 and women, men, dogs, and children of different backgrounds, races, sexualities, and ethnicities gather. Coats, scarves, mittens, and hats decorate the crowd, and while the cold morning air nips at the unbundled skin, the crowd is not deterred. Their voices join together in a unified symphony of chants.
By 10:30 a.m. the marchers begin to move out. The 2019 Women’s March at Denver has officially begun.
Christie Vanochten, a 32 year old from Colorado Springs, has attended many different marches in the past including the Women’s Marches in both Washington DC and Chicago. “[I] like it [the Women’s March] because everyone is so nice and welcoming. Usually at marches there’s cops and it’s tense, but in this one [the one in DC] we were stopping and petting the horses,” said Vanochten.
Vanochten maintains that the energy of Denver is like the other marches. “It is really positive and really supportive. I think it’s had its challenges in the last year, but it’s tried to branch out and be more diverse, include more women of color.”
One and a half hours before the march began, people gathered for the pre-rally. The pre-rally theme was about those who have been silenced and featured a wide variety of speakers. The speakers included a women named Sethe and Lisa Calderón, possibly Denver’s first female mayor.
By the time the march started, the crowd’s energy was contagious and showed no sign of dying down. The route was one mile around the Denver Art Museum and The Capitol building before ending in Civic Center Park.
Once the march ended there was a post-rally full of artists and a speaker. The festivities came to a close a little after 1:05 p.m. In past years the march has not been as inclusive to all people as it was this time. While the march still has ground to cover, it’s making progress. “It’s not perfect,” Vanochten said, “but it’s trying. We all want the same things.”
