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Tens of thousands of people are expected to gather in Washington for days of marching before Trump takes office

WASHINGTON (AP) — Eight years after the historic first march, the Women’s March returns to the nation’s capital Saturday ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The rally has been rebranded, reorganized and rebranded — the People’s March — as a means to broaden support, especially during a reflective moment for progressive organizing following Trump’s decisive victory in November. The Republican will take the oath of office on Monday.

Women outraged by Trump’s 2016 presidential victory flocked to Washington in 2017 and organized large rallies in cities across the country, laying the groundwork for a grassroots movement that became known as the Women’s March. The Washington rally alone drew more than 500,000 protesters, and millions more joined local marches across the country, marking one of the largest single-day demonstrations in American history.

This year’s march is expected to be about a tenth as large as the first and comes amid a subdued moment of reflection as many progressive voters deal with feelings of exhaustion, disappointment and despair following the loss of Vice President Kamala Harris. The relative quiet stands in stark contrast to the anger of the inaugural rally, when huge crowds shouted demands through megaphones and marched in pink hats in response to Trump’s first election victory.

“The reality is that it’s just hard to catch lightning in a bottle,” said Tamika Middleton, executive director of the Women’s March. “It was a very special moment. In 2017, we had not yet seen a Trump presidency and the kind of vitriol that represented.”

The movement fractured after that hugely successful day of protests over accusations that it was not diverse enough. This year’s rebranding as People’s March is the result of an overhaul intended to broaden the group’s appeal. Saturday’s demonstration will promote themes related to feminism, racial justice, anti-militarization and other issues and will end with discussions hosted by various social justice organizations.

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The People’s March is unusual because of the “wide variety of issues brought together under one umbrella,” said Jo Reger, a sociology professor who researches social movements at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. For example, women’s suffrage marches focused on a specific goal: voting rights.

For a broad social justice movement like the march, conflicting views are impossible to avoid and there is “enormous pressure” on organizers to meet everyone’s needs, Reger said. But she also said some disagreement isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“What it often does is create change and bring in new perspectives, especially from underrepresented voices,” Reger says.

Middleton of the Women’s March said a massive demonstration like the one in 2017 is not the goal of Saturday’s event. Instead, the idea is to draw attention to a broader set of issues — women’s and reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, immigration, climate and democracy — rather than centering them more narrowly around Trump.

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“We don’t view the march as the end game,” Middleton said. “How do we get those people to sign up in organizations and into their political homes so that they can continue to fight in their communities in the long term?”

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