Two hundred thousand people are expected to take to the streets of Washington, D.C. on Saturday for the Women’s March on Washington—a sprawling intersectional demonstration of resistance against the Trump administration that has drawn both surprising controversy (read this) and participants from all over the country. In the crowd will be people from all over the country, including these five women from Washington State.

Some of them were Bernie Sanders supporters last year; others backed Hillary Clinton. Most, if not all, are white. Several acknowledged the privilege inherent in traveling across the country for a protest. All of them recounted a similar sort of aftershock from the election that left them feeling heartbroken, confused, and eager to do something. And all of them are now headed to Washington, D.C. to take part in what is expected to be the biggest protest event of Inauguration weekend.

As we enter this unprecedented period—a time in which the president is a thin-skinned tyrant unmoved by facts, legitimate media is “fake news,” and the far-right frequently and effectively coopts signs of progressive resistance for their own narratives—what will be the role of protest? Is it useful at all?

For these women preparing for the Women’s March, the answer is yes. Or at least, “I hope.”

Lori Nesmith, Olympia

Lori Nesmith, 54, works as an administrator at a juvenile rehabilitation institution in Chehalis. In a “knee-jerk reaction” to the election results, she bought tickets to D.C.

“I’ve lived a fairly privileged life,” she says. “I’m Caucasian. I’m middle class. We have the things we need. Working in the juvenile justice system, it’s very clear lots of people aren’t experiencing that.”

“Most people can’t go to Washington and can’t march [there],” Nesmith adds. “I can’t pay for all those people to go, but maybe I can go in their place and be their voice.”

Nesmith says she’s hoping to find a “connection with other women” at the march. “And I’m hoping there are also lots of men there. It’s important that everyone understand... men aren’t going to get any further in the world without women."

The protest may not change minds, Nesmith says, but it can build power.

“I’m not feeling particularly hopeful about where we will go in the next four years," she says. "I don’t feel particularly hopeful that the march is going to change anyone’s opinion or make any difference… in the direction of the [Republican] Party. I hope it will—myself included—mobilize people to become more politically active.”

Nesmith has a personal mission, too. She’s traveling with her 15-year-old daughter, who Nesmith says experienced some "heartbreaking and infuriating" challenges this past year.

“For me," Nesmith says, "part of this trip is also about being able to reconnect with her.”

Paige Gronhovd, Seattle

Paige Gronhovd, 47, couldn’t even stay up to watch the final results on election night. It was an unusually warm day, she’d worked an early shift starting at 5 a.m., and by the evening, as she watched the results with her neighbors, it was becoming clear.

“I excused myself and said I couldn’t do this,” she says. “And that night my husband woke me up and said, ‘President Trump.'”

Gronhovd, a cook at PCC, says she took part in Seattle’s WTO protests in 1999 and participated in antiwar marches in Bellingham but she’s never flown across the country for a protest. She bought her ticket to D.C. within 10 days after the 2016 election.

“Buying the ticket and saying, ‘That’s it—we’re going,’ seemed like way to get through the next several weeks,” she says.

What does she hope comes from the Women’s March? “[That] it just puts a little bit of fear or caution in the new Taliban that’s about to seize power in the U.S.,” she says. “I don’t want to live in a theocracy. [Vice President Mike] Pence wants that.”

She praises the march’s broad platform, which calls for expansive rights for women, immigrants, LGBTQIA people, and others.

“I feel like we’re standing up and having each other’s backs,” she says. “It does matter.”

Michelle Rupp, West Seattle

“I wanted to stand up be counted,” says Michelle Rupp, 58. “I believe this is the land of opportunity and I felt like that was closing down except for a limited few.”

Rupp, who owns an insurance brokerage, planned her trip to D.C. soon after the election and then began working with the organizers of sister marches across Washington State. She says she grew up attending antiwar demonstrations with her parents in the 1960s and ‘70s but most of her adult activism has been concentrated in presidential election years and she’s never been part of organizing a march before.

The state women’s march group has helped create a database of people who may be interested in future actions, she says, and she’s looking at ways to advocate for electoral college reform.

“The whole point is not just to march, but to capture as many people as we can, give them some actions, and say you’ve got to get involved. This can’t be the end,” she says. “To me, it’s the beginning of a movement.”

Molly Schlobohm, West Seattle

It was less than a week after Election Day when Molly Schlobohm booked her ticket.

“I can’t handle feeling helpless,” says Schlobohm, 36. “It was something I had to do to process the election… Now it feels even better. I’m part of a movement that is not going to stay silent.”

Schlobohm, who grew up on a small farm in Kansas and served in the Coast Guard, volunteered for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and caucused last year for Hillary Clinton. She was in shock after the election. Then the shock wore off, she says, and she thought, “Okay, now we’ve got to take action. It forced us to stop being comfortable.”

Schlobohm believes there’s an importance in numbers, but she’s not convinced the march will get Donald Trump’s attention.

“It’s more important to get moderate people’s attention—moderate Republicans, moderate Democrats, anyone who might be scared to stand up and do right thing. We’re letting them know that there are a lot of people out there who are going to support them.”

Jana Schmidt, Maple Valley

Jana Schmidt says she never quite understood her mother’s stories about crying, as a high school student, over the news that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. “I thought it was so weird that someone would cry about a president,” she says. Then she found herself crying at least three times in the days following the election of Donald Trump.

“I was angry at myself because I thought I should have done more to prevent this from happening,” says Schmidt, 43. “A friend said, ‘There’s nothing you could have done.’ I thought, I’m not going to accept that. I’m not just going to accept the demise of our democracy.”

Schmidt says she hopes the march will be the beginning of more political advocacy in her own life, but she’s unsure what form that should take. Until now, she hasn’t considered herself “political” outside of voting regularly. Seeing her 19-year-old daughter’s political involvement, she says, had “a huge impact on me.”

Schmidt hopes the impact of the march Saturday is that “the president-elect will see, right in his face, the opposition to his policies and his rhetoric. That’s why I wanted to go to D.C. I wanted to be part of a movement.”