NORTHAMPTON — The day following the election of Donald Trump, 12-year-old Madison Parr said, almost everyone at John F. Kennedy Middle School wore the color black. Students and teachers were crying, she said.
“It was like the death of women’s rights,” Parr said.
For Parr, the thought of Trump as president used to be a joke, but now she said “it’s very scary.”
So the sixth-grade student is taking action.
On Saturday, the day after Trump’s inauguration, Parr will join around 200,000 people at the Women’s March on Washington.
The march’s Pioneer Valley coordinator, Lindsay Sabadosa, said the results of the election went against everything she stands for, inspiring her to get involved in making her voice heard.
According to Sabadosa, about 100 buses are leaving from Massachusetts to go to Washington, 10 of them from Northampton. Others are leaving from Amherst, South Hadley and Springfield, and Sabadosa said the buses are going to be packed.
Sister marches will take place in Northampton, Pittsfield, Greenfield and Boston. The events in Northampton at the Unitarian Church, 222 Main St., and in Pittsfield at the Colonial Theater, 111 South St., will start at 10 a.m. and live-stream the national march.
To bring the people together and engage the community, Sabadosa said she has organized multiple events leading up to Saturday’s marches, such as sign-making events in Greenfield, Northfield, Springfield, Longmeadow and Northampton.
On Wednesday, Parr was among about 100 people who gathered at the World War II Club in Northampton to make signs for Saturday’s marches.
Parr sat with a table of students from Jackson Street School and John F. Kennedy Middle School. They all plan to ride a bus down to Washington, leaving around midnight Saturday.
She outlined her design in pencil, planning the sign to read “Dump the Trump” with a drawing of the poop emoji.
Her 10-year-old brother Liam sat at the other end of the table. On a long piece of poster board he wrote “IMMIGRATION” and filled the letters in with the colors of the rainbow to also represent gay rights, he said.
Parr said a lot of her friends’ parents are lesbian, gay and transgender.
“They’re all humans,” Parr said. “I was raised to believe everyone has rights.”
At another table, Jennifer Catt, a photographer from Amherst, drew the Statue of Liberty on her sign with the words “Lady Liberty, the original nasty woman.”
“After the election, I felt like I needed to do something,” Catt said.
She said her second-grade son had a similar experience to Parr at school, where many students and teachers were upset with the election results.
But as a mother, Catt said, she wants to show her children “we need to stand up to bullies, even when they’re the highest elected official.”
Former second-grade teacher Roberta Pato punched holes in her sign and tied shoelaces through so she could hang it around her neck. Pato’s handwriting was straight and clear, and she wrote each word in a different color.
“Marching for my grandchildren’s future!!!!” the sign read.
Letitia Ward, of Florence, wore a pink knitted hat inspired by the Pussyhat Project. The project was launched Thanksgiving weekend to provide a collective visual statement for the Women’s March on Washington, according to the project’s website.
Ward plans to attend the march in Boston and made a sign that reads “Fight for justice and human rights.”
“This has to happen,” Florence resident Beth Lev said about the march.
For Lev, it will counter Trump’s intimidation and attempts to silence people. She said joining together shows that the people will not be divided or silenced. She plans to have a sign that’s loud on love, democracy and free speech.
Pat O’Hara, 63, of Amherst, will be joining her 27-year-old to take part in the march. O’Hara said the two will meet in Baltimore where they will join two friends who used to live in Amherst.
“I felt that I couldn’t let this moment pass without making a very pronounced statement of protest against this inauguration, against this new president-elect, against this process of elections that have happened over the last year,” O’Hara said.
Speaking by phone earlier Wednesday, O’Hara said she wouldn’t describe herself as politically active, at least not in the last 35 years. As a student in the 1960s and early ’70s, she said, she did participate in protests against the Vietnam War.
With around 200,000 people registered for Saturday’s march, O’Hara said she wasn’t surprised by the expected turnout.
“I know that most of the women that I meet that can’t go send me with their wishes,” she said. “It’s just a moment – a moment in the history of women’s rights and women’s voices that people feel like enough is enough.”
Staff writer Emily Cutts contributed to this report.
Caitlin Ashworth can be reached at cashworth@gazettenet.com.