The route was shorter this year, beginning at Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill; still, we loafed around until the crowd reached Belltown.  It’s so easy just to follow KIRO 7’s live coverage on the internet, wait until our building comes into view, and then rush out and join the others.This year the march turned right on Cedar instead of heading for the west side of Seattle Center, so we just merged there. Here we approach the Monorail, where we would draw a greeting from a passing train. It wasn’t sunny like last year, but there was definitely a break in the rain. There’s no official tally, but when the front of the crowd arrived at Seattle Center there were still marchers crossing the freeway back at Pine Street. There were tens of thousands, by anybody’s count.

Marching, by itself, seldom accomplishes much. President Trump treated the nationwide event as though it were a celebration of his victorious year.  But women didn’t just march during the year, some of them ran for office as well. Among those was Seattle’s new mayor, Jenny Durkan, whose picture appears on the cover of this week’s Time magazine.

She was among the speakers at the rally.  Tomorrow, Sunday the 21st, the actual anniversary of the first march, features a slate of more particular events, called Womxn Act on Seattle. Here’s the schedule of events.

— Scott McKee