SC women join Saturday’s DC march to protest Trump

Elizabeth Tuten sobbed when Donald Trump was elected president in November.

The 23-year-old Columbia resident says she cried “in a grieving way that I have not experienced since the passing of a family member.”

Saturday, Tuten will be one of more than 2,000 S.C. women expected to attend the Women’s March on Washington, expected to draw tens of thousands.

“I hope it ignites enough passion for resistance to carry me and those around me through the next four years of battle,” Tuten said.

Tuten will march with her mother, Nancy, and younger sister, 19-year-old Emily, a Furman University student. The three were boarding a bus in Columbia Friday night and scheduled to arrive Saturday in Washington.

Buses filled with other S.C. women left from Greenville, Florence, Charleston, Myrtle Beach and Hilton Head.

Knitted hats with cat ears

The Tutens plan to march wearing knitted hats with cat ears – a protest of vulgar comments that new President Donald Trump made on a 2005 video, which surfaced during the campaign.

Nancy Tuten said she hopes the rally inspires women to roll up their sleeves and work to protect public education, the environment, women’s rights and immigrants’ rights.

“The election left me feeling hopeless and disappointed in the electorate and in my country,” she said. Now, however, it is time “not to agonize but to organize.”

Showing up in Washington on Trump’s first full day in office will signal women are listening and paying attention, she said.

The march will be the family’s first protest in Washington, but they are familiar with supporting a cause.

Nancy Tuten took her older daughter to protests calling for the removal of the Confederate flag from the S.C. State House dome in the ’90s, Elizabeth Tuten recalled.

The Tuten daughters were raised with the mentality that “people are power,” Elizabeth Tuten said.

Elizabeth Tuten said the grief that she felt over the election results did not stem from the loss of Democrat Hillary Clinton, who would have been the country’s first female president. Instead, she said, she mourned Trump’s vast support, which came despite mocking a disabled reporter and refusing to release his tax returns.

Elizabeth Tuten also was shocked that 53 percent of white women voters voted for Trump. “We, as a demographic, had failed the sisterhood.”

‘They voted for him anyhow’

Barbara Barton said she also was upset at the election results because the showed many people did not have a problem with Trump comments seen as misogynistic, racist and divisive.

“They voted for him anyhow,” Barton said.

Barton, a 63-year-old Columbia attorney, will attend the rally with her 26-year-old daughter Katie Barton.

Barbara Barton just had ankle replacement surgery and “can’t, technically, march.” But her daughter plans to push her mother in a wheelchair.

The march will educate younger women who were not alive during the women’s movement of the ’60s and ’70s, Barbara Barton said.

“It is enlightening for young women today to see that there are people who want to infringe on their rights,” Barton said.

That younger generation protesting on Saturday also will carry on the cause of women’s rights, Barton said.

“The things that we’ve accomplished during our generation will continue,” she said. “The women, who will continue after we’re gone, understand and value the accomplishments that have been made and the rights that they have.”

This story was originally published January 20, 2017 at 6:07 PM with the headline "SC women join Saturday’s DC march to protest Trump."