Up to 75,000 expected to attend the silent Womxn’s March Seattle on Saturday

Above is KIRO 7’s live feed of the day’s events in Seattle, including the Womxn’s march.

This Saturday, Seattle is expected to host the third biggest Women’s March in the country, after Washington DC and Los Angeles. Organizers expect 50,000 to 70,000 marchers, depending on the weather.

The Womxn’s March Seattle starts at 10am at Judkins Park and ends 3.6 miles later at Seattle Center. We’ll get into the day’s events and timeline in a bit. But first let’s talk about the controversy. The march is designed to be silent, which isn’t sitting well with people who want their voices heard, who feel like they’re being silenced by a movement they looked to for a release. But volunteer coordinator and spokeswoman Joy Gerhard says the silence is inspired by historical events.

“It was suggested by a woman who was involved with activism back in the 1960’s, involved with the Black Panthers and other forms of activism for people of color. Her comment was when everybody’s shouting, nobody’s listening. The message can get drowned out because there are so many voices talking at the same time. There’s a degree of solidarity to silence. It honors previous, highly successful, non-violent silent marches. We were inspired by the Salt March that Gandhi did in 1930 in India. We’re also inspired by a silent march in New York in 1917 done by the NAACP. This is a request that the organizers are making, this is not a mandate, no one is going to be silenced.”

Along the route there will be soapbox speakers with bullhorns, so the silence also allows marchers to hear their messages as they walk by.

“Why waste time shouting to people who aren’t going to listen when we can send a message that is incredibly loud and incredibly clear and incredibly cohesive. It’s going to be deafening, the silence, walking with 50,000 people.”

Let’s get down to the details of the march: the day officially starts at 10am at Judkins Park.

“We’re going to have dozens and dozens of organizations, non-profits in the area, around the perimeter of the park. As participants come they’ll be greeted by connectors wearing bright green hats and asked, ‘Who are you interested in supporting? Who would you like to march with?’ and directed to the organizations that they want to support. Because the underline goal we have for the march is to put people who are eager to help, eager to act, in direct contact with the organizations who have been doing this work for decades. We really want for this to be a call to action. It’s not just a march, it’s the beginning of something. And putting people in contact with organizations that they can join to make a difference.”

At 10:30am there’s a rally with speakers and at 11am people will start marching.

In case you’re curious about the X in Womxn’s March Seattle, Gerhard explains:

“So the ‘x’ in women is added to support intersectionality in our movement. There has been a lot of exclusion in the feminist movement of trans and non-binary people and we wanted to be really inclusive of those groups of people who have historically not been part of this conversation.”

The X reflects a national, even international, movement.

Gerhard says one of the reasons the march is getting so big is because people from up and down the west coast, and beyond, are traveling to Seattle to attend.

“National has been sending people directly to Seattle. So we have people coming in from Alaska and Hawaii and people from other countries, even, to march with us. Which is saying a lot.”

Gerhard says any question you may have can be answered on their website.

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