The 2017 Women's March in Denver, which drew about 100,000 people, still stands out in the memory of Lily Noteboom. That's why she's organizing the Denver People's March on Saturday, January 18, to protest Trump's second inauguration.
"That was my personal introduction to marching for representational rights," Noteboom says of the Women's March. "I was just seventeen myself, so it was pretty impactful."
Attending with her mother and grandmother, Noteboom recalls "listening to hundreds of thousands of women's voices, chanting together," and "signs, some funny ones, and there being so much energy, lots of different emotions, feelings about why were marching."
Noteboom also remembers a string of "thousands of notes" that women wrote to their past or future selves. She wrote a note to her future self, and while she can't remember what she wrote, it definitely didn't discuss organizing an event to follow in the footsteps of that life-changing march.
Noteboom, now 25, has been putting together the Denver People's March over the past three months. Inspired by those memories, she's been relying on resources from the Women's March, a national organization that formed after the success of the 2017 Women's March.
The march is set to take place on the morning of Saturday, January 18, at the Colorado State Capitol, and will take a short route around Civic Center Park, heading west on Colfax Avenue. According to Noteboom, the focus will be on supporting "targeted and marginalized communities," including immigrants, women and transgender and queer individuals, and will feature speakers from different communities, including Palestinians and Ukrainians.
The Denver People's March organizers currently expect almost 1,000 people to attend, a much smaller crowd than came out for the 2017 version.
According to the Women's March, the nationwide demonstration on January 21, 2017, was the largest single-day protest in U.S. history, drawing more than five million people to marches held in solidarity across the country. Organizers from local and national Women's March chapters continued the momentum, organizing annual women's marches every January until the COVID-19 pandemic derailed the tradition in 2021.
Various Women's marches took place after the pandemic, including protests before and after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2022, ending the federal right to abortion.
The Denver Women's March that Noteboom remembers fondly ceased as a chapter in 2023, however, and the group isn't what it used to be on a national scale. Megan Fine, a former board member, says that "because of a lack of support, we weren't able to continue" marches in Denver. The organization has "no involvement" with the Denver People's March, Fine says, even if it did inspire Noteboom and others.
Lily Noteboom still remembers a sting of thousands of notes written by women at the 2017 Women's March in Denver to their past or future selves. She can't remember what she wrote, but she couldn't have guessed she'd be organizing the march that would follow this event's footsteps.
Lily Noteboom
Noteboom connected with other women in the video's comment section. From there, she began organizing a march with three other women she met on Facebook: Fiona Faulkner, Kristen Switzer and Rachael Facey. The group of women, all between the ages of 25 and thirty, had never organized a large event before, but they "took it in stride" and moved quickly to organize a women's march for Denver, Noteboom says.
They started by reaching out to the organizers of the Women's March in Washington, D.C., with hopes of guidance on pulling permits, finding speakers and planning a route for the march. They couldn't reach the Women's March organizers, though, and "we realized that they largely dissipated," Noteboom says. However, they did find a page on the Women's March website promoting a "People's March" targeted at supporting communities who felt threatened.
"We felt that represented what we were going for really well and decided to also call ourselves the People's March," Noteboom says. "We did start with the idea of it being a women's march. But we did talk about covering all the topics that we represent today, so a bigger community than just women: queer individuals, trans individuals, persons of color, immigrants, stuff like that is what we started talking about."
By late November, the group decided to shift to organizing a Denver People's March, but Noteboom credits the Women's March website and social media accounts for providing helpful resources.
"We got inspiration on who to contact for speakers and sponsors," she says. "We got our idea for the march path from their socials as well."
Now, even more connections are being made in Colorado because of the People's March. A network has formed among fellow organizers who are putting on "sister marches," Noteboom says, with thirteen People's March events planned in Colorado on January 18, including in Fort Collins, Steamboat Springs and Boulder. Dozens more are planned across 48 states and Washington D.C., she adds.
"The People's March represents people's power," Noteboom says. "I just hope people are able to feel recognized whether they agree or disagree with us. Hopefully, we're able to represent everyone and show that everyone has significance despite differences."
Noteboom also wants the Denver People's March to inspire people the same way the 2017 Women's March inspired her.
"We're using a lot of inspiration from them and from the past events, all of the events since 2017 to now," Noteboom says. "Eight years have gone by, and it's hard to say whether it will be similar or different...I hope people will be able to find community and comfort in this march the way I found it in 2017."
The Denver People's March is scheduled to start at 11 a.m. on Saturday, January 18, at the Colorado State Capitol, 200 East Colfax Avenue. Visit the People March's website for more information.
