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On The Ground At The Massive Women’s March In LA

“I wanted to be a part of the resistance”

 Stacey Leasca
01.21.17

Saturday, January 21 marked Donald Trump’s first official day as president of the United States. However, according to the freshly minted commander in chief, he doesn’t technically start work until Monday. As he said in an interview in early January,

“Day one—which I will consider to be Monday as opposed to Friday or Saturday. Right? I mean my day one is gonna be Monday because I don’t want to be signing and get it mixed up with lots of celebration.”

Of course, that didn’t stop him from spending his Friday evening scaling back the Affordable Care Act. While he might be taking the rest of the weekend off, for the millions of Americans who took to the streets to oppose his presidency and policies, day one is today.

An estimated 500,000 participants took part in the March on Washington in D.C. In Los Angeles, organizers are estimating the number of participants to be nearly 750,000.

Nearly 600 sister marches also took place across the country in all 50 states and on seven continents (yes seven). There is, in fact, a march in Antarctica.

The editorial team at GOOD ventured out into our hometown here in LA to get a sense of why people wanted to take time out of their hectic lives to create signs, sew hats, and march on the streets.

“I wanted to be a part of the resistance,” Heidy, a local resident told GOOD while holding a sign reading “Undocumented Mujer.”

“Because we believe in democracy and because we need our leaders to be kind,” Kim said while standing proud next to her daughter, Gigi.

The march itself was subdued but strong, with women, men, and children all standing shoulder to shoulder, flooding the streets of downtown.

As for after the march, Kelli Soto, community and policy advocate at the American Civil Liberties Union in LA, shared her advice:

“There are a lot of ways that you can engage, depending on your capability and zest. You can start at the level of talking to friends and family, that’s really important. Educate yourself, that’s really important. Know what your rights are so you can tell other people. You can also contact congress, contact your local legislators and let them know what you believe in and what you’re going to stand for.”

Check out more of the sights from Los Angeles in our slideshow.

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Slideshows

Youth activists gather to fight climate change at UN Summit: 'We need to transform anger into action'

Julian Meehan

Young leaders from around the world are gathering at the United Nations Headquarters in New York Saturday to address arguably the most urgent issue of our time. The Youth Climate Summit comes on the heels of an international strike spearheaded by Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate activist from Sweden, who arrived in New York via emissions-free sailboat earlier this month.

Translated from Swedish, "berg" means "mountain," so it may feel fated that a young woman with Viking blood in her veins and summit in her name would be at the helm. But let's go out on a limb and presume Thunberg, in keeping with most activists, would chafe at the notion of pre-ordained "destiny," and rightly so. Destiny is passive — it happens to you. It's also egomaniacal. Change, on the other hand, is active; you have to fight. And it is humble. "We need to get angry and understand what is at stake," Thunberg declared. "And then we need to transform that anger into action."

This new generation of activists' most pernicious enemy is denial. The people in charge — complacent politicians and corporation heads who grossly benefit from maintaining the status quo — are buffered from real-life consequences of climate change. But millions of people don't share that privilege. For them, climate change isn't an abstract concept, but a daily state of emergency, whether it comes in the form of "prolonged drought in sub-Saharan Africa…devastating tropical storms sweeping across Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific…[or] heatwaves and wildfires," as Amnesty International reportsare all too real problems people are facing on a regular basis.

RELATED: Greta Thunberg urges people to turn to nature to combat climate change

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18 of the best signs from New York's Climate Strike march

Millions of people in over 150 countries across the globe marched for lawmakers and corporations to take action to help stop climate change on Friday, September 20.

The Climate Strikes were organized by children around the world as an extension of the of the "Fridays for Future" campaign. Students have been walking out of classrooms on Fridays to speak out about political inaction surrounding the climate crisis.

"We need to act right now to stop burning fossil fuels and ensure a rapid energy revolution with equity, reparations and climate justice at its heart," organizers say.

There's no doubt the visual images from the marches send a powerful message to those on the ground but especially those watching from around the world. GOOD's own Gabriel Reilich was on the scene for the largest of the Climate Strikes. Here are 18 of the best signs from the Climate Strike march in New York City.

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September 20th marks the beginning of a pivotal push for the future of our planet. The Global Climate Strike will set the stage for the United Nations Climate Action Summit, where more than 60 nations are expected to build upon their commitment to 2015's Paris Agreement for combating climate change.

Millions of people are expected to take part in an estimated 4,000 events across 130 countries.

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Why the iPhone 11 is making people with trypophobia experience panic and revulsion

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via Apple

When the iPhone 11 debuted on September 10, it was met with less enthusiasm than the usual iPhone release. A lot of techies are holding off purchasing the latest gadget until Apple releases a phone with 5G technology.

Major US phone carriers have yet to build out the infrastructure necessary to provide a consistent 5G experience, so Apple didn't feel it necessary to integrate the technology into its latest iPhone.

A dramatic new feature on the iPhone 11 Pro is its three camera lenses. The three lenses give users the the original wide, plus ultrawide and telephoto options.

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Woman dreams she swallowed her engagement ring and wakes up with it missing

Dreams can have a powerful effect on us.

via I love butter / Flickr

We often dismiss our dreams as nonsensical dispatches from the mind while we're deep asleep. But recent research proves that our dreams can definitely affect our waking lives.

People often dream about their significant others and studies show it actually affects how we behave towads them the next day.

"A lot of people don't pay attention to their dreams and are unaware of the impact they have on their state of mind," said Dylan Selterman, psychology lecturer at the University of Maryland, says according to The Huffington Post. "Now we have evidence that there is this association."

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