“It’s my dream come true,” said Compton, a 49-year-old retired assistant high school principal from Lakemont, Georgia, population 2,200. “For the first time in my lifetime, I don’t feel like the only feminist in my town.”
Two years after millions marched around the country and the world in an unambiguous rebuke to President Donald Trump, much smaller crowds appeared at Saturday’s events surrounding the second anniversary of the Women’s March.
There was much to celebrate. The first march galvanized many women across the country to become politically active for the first time in their lives. Many poured their energy into helping to elect an unprecedented number of women to Congress last year.
But Saturday was also a test of how the Women’s March movement has weathered a storm of controversy in recent months.
Tamika Mallory, co-president of Women’s March, the group that has planned the march in Washington, has been under fire for ties to Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, who is widely reviled for anti-Semitic speeches. The Women’s March has issued a series of statements denouncing anti-Semitism and apologized for its delayed response to the controversy.
In Washington, Trish Klein, Jody Kanikula and Amy Hain from Chicago said they had an intense discussion about the charges of anti-Semitism before deciding to make the trip.
“We were conflicted,” said Hain, a 40-year-old sales director at a semiconductor company, on Saturday. “There’s always going to be some discussion of different views, and we didn’t want it to derail the bigger picture.”
Said Klein, a 39-year-old special education teacher: “Apathy is not an option.”
At the rally site, a frigid marble plaza only blocks from the White House, early attendees seemed to be outnumbered by barkers hawking T-shirts and buttons.
“I’m disappointed. It’s definitely not the turnout I was looking for,” said Peggy Baron, 53, a lawyer from Dublin, Ohio, who said that the first Washington march two years ago had been “wall-to-wall women.”
But as the morning progressed, throngs of marchers began to fill the plaza, and spirits visibly lifted.
“I came two years ago. It’s definitely smaller, but the spirit is very much alive,” said Rachel Stucky, 53, an educator from Salem, Oregon. “It’s a chance to march, to be with others who are like-minded, to be able to express my energy. People have a lot of say, and that doesn’t change.”
“The experience I had two years ago was indescribable. I wanted to feel that way again.”
In New York and Philadelphia, rival events were being held — one backed by local organizers and the other backed by affiliates of the national group.
On Friday, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., became the latest figure to distance herself from the Women’s March leadership.
“It should not be this difficult to condemn hate speech,” she wrote in an op-ed essay in USA Today. “This weekend, I will join a movement of women around the nation who are participating in local marches that have distanced themselves from those national Women’s March leaders who still ally with bigotry.”
The controversy has further strained relations between the New York-based Women’s March group led by Mallory and local leaders who organized “sister” marches around the country without any connection to the national group. Some local leaders were already angry that the New York-based Women’s March filed a trademark on the phrase “Women’s March,” a move that appeared to be aimed at preventing them from using the name without permission.
Now local leaders say the accusations of anti-Semitism have made it more difficult to raise money and recruit marchers.
“This year has been incredibly difficult,” said Karen Cosmas, executive director of March Forward Massachusetts, which plans the marches in the Boston area. “First, to be clear about our distinction from national organizations. Second, to answer questions repeatedly about our own values because they are conflated with what four women in New York say and do.”
In Los Angeles, about 100,000 people were expected to show up and hear speakers who include leaders of the teachers union strike, Jane Fonda and Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of Gavin Newsom, California’s new governor.
“I do a see a little ‘march fatigue’ going on,” acknowledged Emiliana Guereca, executive director of Women’s March Los Angeles, who has marched twice in recent weeks in support of striking teachers. The controversy over Farrakhan, she said, has not helped.
In other parts of the country, the controversy has taken a deeper toll. In Washington state, women’s march organizers decided to close their chapter after Saturday’s march.
“We have decided to distance ourselves from Women’s March and to join another organization, Smart Politics, that will allow us to help everyone without biases or discrimination,” wrote Angie Beem, director of the board. “It is difficult for us to walk away from something that has literally changed our lives. But, we have to.”
Nonetheless, marchers began arriving in Washington, D.C., on Friday for the national march. Although the 2017 Women’s March logged more than 1 million riders on the Metro — the second-largest number in its history — a spokeswoman for the transit system said it was not planning for a deluge this time around.
“We’re operating our normal Saturday service,” said Sherri Ly, Metro’s media relations manager. “We’re not planning any additional service.”
Rally, the ride-sharing bus service that partnered with the Women’s March, said that 25 buses had been booked to ferry people from 46 cities to Washington, amounting to about 1,300 riders.
The permit approved by the National Park Service indicated that 10,000 people were expected.
It is difficult to say how much the controversy has depressed turnout and sponsorship. While much has been made of the absence of certain groups from the sponsorship list this year — the Democratic National Committee, the Center for American Progress and Emily’s List — none of those groups sponsored women’s march anniversary events last year.
Jo Reger, professor of sociology at Oakland University in Michigan, who studies feminist movements, said other factors that can depress turnout include activist burnout, and paradoxically, success.
“Marches or movements can lose some momentum when people see some of their issues being addressed,” she said. “With the recent midterm elections, some may feel like the country is going in a different direction after the Trump election and that may lower the numbers participating.”
But Compton, who traveled to Washington from her tiny town in northeastern Georgia, said the sense of excitement was only growing. She said the group of Democrats in Rabun County, where she lives, was nearly defunct in 2016, but has 300 members today.
“We’re hopping busy all the time,” she said. “We came within a hair on a rat’s tail of electing a black woman as governor in Georgia.”
She said she had heard about the controversy around the Women’s March online but she didn’t dwell on it.
“If we get busy in a bunch of petty fights, we get nowhere,” she said. “Not working together got us exactly where we are now and look what is in the White House.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.