This feminist icon isn’t going down without a fight.
Gloria Steinem, the co-chair of the Women’s March on Washington, joined a host of other keynote speakers on Saturday to rally activists before they marched through the nation’s capital. Other speakers included America Ferrera, Scarlett Johansson, LGBTQ activist Janet Mock, Michael Moore and civil rights activist Angela Davis.
In her speech, Steinem hailed the Obamas, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton for their service, noting that Clinton “is alive and definitely not in jail.”
Then she went after Trump.
“Trump and his handlers have found a fox for every chicken coop in Washington. A twitter finger must not become a trigger finger,” she said, adding that Trump’s “grandiosity, impulsivity, hypersensitivity and an apparent inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality ... was on full display in his inaugural address yesterday.”
Steinem declared the modern age to be one of the most dangerous times for American women’s rights, and lashed out at violence, hate speech and a male-dominated society.
“No more asking daddy. We are linked; we are not ranked, and this is a day that will change us forever because we are together.”
The mere announcement of Steinem’s participation breathed even more life into a day of activism, which was expected to draw hundreds of thousands of people to Washington.
She said on Instagram in December:
I am proud to be one of thousands who will come to Washington to make clear that we will keep working for a democracy in which we are linked as human beings, not ranked by race or gender or class or any other label.
Steinem has been a longtime advocate for civil rights and helped set up the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971. She protested against South African apartheid in 1984 and co-founded Choice USA, a nonprofit that acts as a fierce proponent of reproductive choice.
