It was an uncommon sight in the Boston Common as a 5-foot tall handmade drinking straw made its way through the park’s trails. It accompanied a crowd of hundreds of feminists on their “March Forward,” a Women’s March rallying support behind presidential candidate Kamala Harris just days before the election. 

“The last straw,” a symbol created by one of the women marching, was emblematic of the sentiment shared by attendees about the implications of a second Trump presidency. 

“I’m looking out at you and there are a lot of women around my age in this crowd,” Rev. Debra Haffner of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Newton said to the crowd gathered at the bottom of the steps in front of the Massachusetts State House before the march began.  

“I want to say to you, I am tired of protesting for this shit. I was 18 when Roe passed. I was 67 when it was overturned,” Haffner said.

The lively crowd erupted in cheers and chants throughout Haffner’s speech, as well as the speeches by self-made talk show host James “Jimmy” Hills and Dana Alas, the executive director for the mayor’s office of Women’s Advancement. 

“We are not going back” was the one chant that could be heard echoing through the crowd the entire event.  

There was no shortage of creativity of expression among the passionate attendees. Countless colorful signs decorated the mass with slogans like, “A woman’s place is in the House and Senate,” “It’s about madam time,” and “My fav season is the fall of the patriarchy.”

Young girls held signs that asked people to vote with their futures in mind, while older women in attendance reflected on their lifetimes of protest for change.

“I sat back today as I was driving to come here and thought I was 17 years old when I was a freshman at BU and I was marching on Comm Avenue for the Vietnam War and women’s rights. Now I’m 71 and I’m doing it. It’s unbelievable. I’m hoping that our country will make good decisions,” said Marla Colarusso, who drove to the march from Cape Cod with three of her friends.

Judy D’Olympia, one of Colarusso’s friends, explained that the group of women hoped the march would empower other women to vote blue, “even if they are in a split relationship with their husbands.”

Around the country, “March Forward” events were held in nearly 200 cities. The biggest march in Washington D.C. pulled thousands of feminists onto the streets.

Tracy Murphy had never planned a march before committing to hosting the Boston chapter of March Forward. 

Murphy had originally planned on traveling to Washington, D.C., to attend the march there but was unable to make the trip due to work commitments.

“I reached out to the headquarters of the Women’s March through e-mail and online and said, ‘Is there going to be [a ‘March Forward’] in Boston?’ And they said, ‘there will be one if you would organize it,’” she said. 

So Murphy did, and close to 500 people RSVP’d to attend the Boston march.

“I just couldn’t sit through this election without doing something. It’s been weighing so heavy on me,” Murphy said. “We have so much at stake that even though I’m working a full-time job, I added this to my plate because it’s just so important.”

As the huge crowd descended onto the common to start their mile-plus-long route, cars watching from surrounding streets honked and drivers waved to the cheering and chanting crowd. 

Women screamed “Join us” to onlookers en route. Many did.

Though the crowd was primarily women, some men attended as well. 84-year-old Martin Salka proudly carried his sign that read “This is what a feminist looks like” as he marched.

“The most important thing for this country right now,” said Salka, “is that women are treated the same way the rest of us are and that it’s not a male-dominated decision-making core.”

The crowd convened back in front of the state house after the march to listen to a final speech by Massachusetts Sen. Becca Rausch, who encouraged people to take action by visiting her website to volunteer their time to actions such as phone banking and door knocking. 

“This is not a guaranteed win for our next President Kamala Harris. She cannot knock on every single door in Pennsylvania, every single door in New Hampshire, and every single door in North Carolina, Nevada, and Arizona by herself. She is just one woman,” Rausch said. 

Haffner had started the march off with a prayer and its hopeful spirit was in the air as groups of women lingered after the event to get to know each other and plan their actions until Election Day. 

“Together, we pray, we hold our voices, we bring our hearts to a belief …  that the American people, in the great tradition of this green, this city, of women like Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, that we will prevail and democracy will rule,” Haffner had said.

Susan B. Anthony, one of the most famous women’s rights activists born in Massachusetts, traveled around the country working to gain independence and equality for women. She lobbied Congress every year for 41 years until her death.

She died in 1906, 14 years before the passage of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.

Eileen Ryan, 64, a women’s history tour guide with Boston by foot also attended Saturday’s march with Anthony in mind. 

Wearing a traditional white suffragette dress and hat with gold, white, and purple details—the colors of the suffragette movement—she paid homage to one of her tours: “Road to the Vote.”  

“It’s been 104 years since women got the right to vote in America,” Ryan said. “It’s time we elect a woman president.”