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With suffragist sashes and flower crowns, Philly women to vote with their feet at March on Washington

Cait Kinslow had been looking for some sign of postelection hope - and then she found it: an announcement for the Women's March on Washington.

Cait Kinslow (left) and Tina Markoe Kinslow work on signs. Kinslow has organized a group of family and friends to rent a bus and head to the Women's March on Washington on Jan. 21.
Cait Kinslow (left) and Tina Markoe Kinslow work on signs. Kinslow has organized a group of family and friends to rent a bus and head to the Women's March on Washington on Jan. 21.Read more

Cait Kinslow had been looking for some sign of postelection hope - and then she found it: an announcement for the Women's March on Washington.

She phoned a charter bus company, thinking only for a moment about her car payment, mortgage, and student loans, then pulled out a credit card and paid the $3,000 fee, confident her family and friends would fill the 55 seats.

They did, in all their diversity - Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, and atheist, Irish, Italian, Syrian, and German, young and older, immigrant and native, many driven by anger and fear over the election of a man whose treatment of women they found vulgar.

"I needed to do something to make some kind of statement," said Kinslow, 26, a graphic designer who lives in Glenside.

The bus leaves at 6 a.m. sharp Saturday. And it will have plenty of company.

Nearly 20,000 people from the Philadelphia region are traveling to take part in the Women's March, helping to crowd the nation's capital with an anticipated 200,000 demonstrators the day after Donald Trump is inaugurated.

It can seem, though, as if each marcher is driven by a different reason - or by many reasons, demonstrating not for a single cause but for dozens.

More than 12,000 are going from Pennsylvania, a key swing state that voted for Trump, and at least 6,000 from New Jersey.

Amtrak trains from Philadelphia to Washington are sold out. Charter buses are full or nearly so.

On march day, scores of buses will depart from points across the region, from Center City to North Wales to Camden to Egg Harbor. Some people plan to stuff their cars with friends and drive south in the early-morning darkness.

"We are standing up to let the president and his administration know that we are here, we are capable of organizing on a large scale, and we will not stand by and idly watch as they destroy any progress we have made in the last eight years," said New Jersey state organizer Caitlin Wilson.

Thousands more people intend to participate in 270 sister marches in Philadelphia, Trenton, New York, Los Angeles, and dozens of other cities across the nation and in 33 global locales from Tokyo to Sydney to Paris.

"It's about giving people a voice," said Alexandra Hackett Ferber, of Montgomery County, a co-organizer of the Pennsylvania delegation.

About 202,000 people have said on Facebook that they'll march in Washington, a number that grows each day. The demonstration promises to be the largest of more than a dozen inaugural-week protests.

More than 1,200 buses have applied for permits to park at RFK Stadium on the day of the march, far more than the 200 that applied for Inauguration Day parking, the Washington Post reports. RFK has a capacity of 1,300 buses.

Women in Kinslow's group will wear old-style suffragist sashes to show their pride and determination - and to make it easier to find one another in the crowd. New Jersey marchers will don flower crowns, to represent the Garden State.

Women and their male allies are traveling from all 50 states, and at least one bus is coming from New Mexico, a 56-hour round trip. At least one person is driving from South Dakota.

Marchers say they're demonstrating for equal pay, religious freedom, family leave, diversity, civil rights, political involvement, female veterans, abortion rights, immigrants, gays, gun safety, press freedom, minorities, the disabled, the poor, and victims of sexual assault.

"It does make it more complex in terms of honing into specific issues," said Pennsylvania co-organizer Heidi Solomon-Orlick, of Berks County. "In some ways it's what makes this march historic and unique."

She cites three core issues, important to women regardless of their political views: Health care. Fair pay. Safety.

She and other leaders insist the march is not anti-Trump, even though many of its causes fit squarely within the Democratic Party framework.

Would there be a Woman's March if Hillary Clinton had won?

"I don't know," said Pennsylvania co-organizer Shawna Knipper, of Lehigh County. "Would it have been needed? I think so. We've never reached the levels of equality we should have reached."

Feminist author Gloria Steinem and civil rights icon Harry Belafonte are honorary cochairs, and partners include Planned Parenthood, Greenpeace, and the National Organization for Women. Comedian Amy Schumer, pop star Katy Perry, and actress Zendaya are among the celebrities expected to turn out.

"We want to ensure that this country knows women are not happy," march cofounder Tamika Mallory told NPR. "And when we get angry, change happens."

But not all women are unhappy.

The election showed the idea of women as a united, liberal-leaning voting bloc to be fiction. Among white women, 53 percent voted for Trump. Among white women without college degrees, it was 62 percent.

Kutztown nurse Siobhan Walsh-Bonis has been a Republican for nearly 40 years, proudly voting for presidential candidates from Ronald Reagan to John McCain. She's going to the march.

She voted for Barack Obama to help people get health care, she said, but was ready to back the GOP until the party nominated Trump, whose behavior she deemed a disgrace.

"There must be other Republicans who feel as I do," she said.

The Philadelphia march should draw about 9,700, according to responses on Facebook. New Jersey will host sister marches in Trenton and in Pompton Plains, northwest of Paterson. No march is planned in South Jersey.

"It's not protesting Donald Trump," said co-organizer Mariel Martin, who comes from a line of politically active South Philadelphia women. "It's about female empowerment."

It costs $52 to ride on Kinslow's bus, and every seat has been sold.

"This is going to be something in 25 or 30 years that kids are going to be reading about in textbooks," Kinslow said. "We want to be clear, 'I stood up for what's right.' "

jgammage@phillynews.com

215-854-4906 @JeffGammage