Thousands gathered Saturday for the Women’s March on Washington and at similar demonstrations across the country, with activists saying the protests are the beginning of what they hope to accomplish in 2020.

It starts with a march and, they hope, ends with President Trump being voted out of office.

The annual protest burst into the national consciousness in 2017, when it inspired millions to take to the streets in Washington and across the globe. On Saturday, Women’s March protests drew thousands to the nation’s capital, as well as cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Denver.

Despite Women’s March organizers saying Saturday’s rally would not feature speakers or the presence of a stage, the march kicked off with all three. As flakes of snow began to fall and temperatures hovered near 30 degrees, Martin Luther King III took the stage to introduce his wife, humanitarian and activist Andrea Waters King.

She reminded the crowd that 2020 marks 100 years since women earned the right to vote. And this weekend is one that also honors the legacy of her late father-in-law, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

“Remembering is not enough,” she said. “We must see this march as a time of rededication and renewal … this can be the decade that ushers in new freedom.”

The crowd cheered, as she continued, “Our bodies may be cold but our souls are on fire today.”

At the center of Freedom Plaza, as the song “Milkshake” played, Christina Dietrich, 34, sat on the ground breast-feeding her daughter, Lucy. She’s never come to a Women’s March before, and generally does not support it as a movement because she considers it “neoliberal feminism.”

“It’s got the outfit on, it looks right, it looks progressive, but it’s entrenched in capitalism,” she said.

Still, she came to Saturday’s march because “there’s a sense of urgency” ahead of the elections this year. She said she hoped to peacefully agitate, carrying a basket of roses and a sign that read “all workers unite.”

On the west end of Freedom Plaza, a woman wearing a “Handmaid’s Tale” red dress held a sign with the words “vote while you still can.”

A few feet away, A.J. Campbell wore a pride flag displaying a Jewish star. She is a community organizer with the group Zioness, which last year protested the Women’s March due to the controversies surrounding some of its leaders.

She hasn’t been to the march since its 2017 debut, but this year decided to show up with her daughter alongside other Jewish women. Campbell, 51, said the organization made “definite progress” this year by replacing members of its board. But she said she doesn’t think its leaders have gone far enough to address other issues surrounding the organization.

“They have to include all women. They can’t have a movement based on telling us what to think and what to feel,” she said. “Jews who support Israel are just as interested in social justice issues and just as interested in women’s issues.”

Two sisters toward the front, Sandee Peluso, 55, and Deb Sulenski, 62 wore white jackets and suffragist hats in honor of the anniversary of women’s right to vote. They were part of a group of 50 people who took a bus to the District from Chester County, Pa.

The sisters, who have attended Women’s March events in Philadelphia in previous years, said they were hopeful the impeachment hearings would draw larger crowds this year. They said they would keep marching “until something gets fixed in the government.”

“I never thought at my age that I’d be out protesting like this,” Sulenski said.

People were dancing to songs such as Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” drinking hot cocoa and coffee, and buying hand warmers. Many carried signs that read “Ratify the ERA now” or “See you at the voting booth,” while others contained images of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Outside Metro Center on Saturday, streams of women emerged from the Metro station to lines of vendors hawking pink hats, women’s rights flags, buttons that said “Women’s Rising,” and T-shirts — lots of T-shirts.

“Come and get your hats, gloves, scarves,” shouted vendor Larry Owens, 64, of Southeast Washington. “They’ll keep you nice and warm for the march!”

Most women, it seemed, had brought their own. Pink hats were pulled low to protect ears from the cold.

Several carried homemade signs, or printed banners from the National Organization for Women being distributed outside a nearby coffee shop. Stacks of bright orange circles bearing the words, “respect women of color” had been taken by 10:15 a.m., said NOW chapters coordinator Supria Bhatia.

Batia stood by a bin filled with blue buttons declaring, “keep abortion legal,” and green signs marked, “ERA NOW.” As she handed out posters, two women in pink hats came jogging up the block.

“Do you still have the ‘respect women of color’ one? We just ran back three blocks,” one said.

“Sorry,” Batia said, offering them a black-and-white version instead.

“We should’ve come back sooner,” said the other. “There are so many women here!”

In cities around the country, women in pink hats assembled under the Women’s March banner for various kinds of activism.

In New York, pink hats punctuated Columbus Circle as people carried signs with pro-woman and anti-Trump slogans, such as “Elect Women,” and “My body, My choice.” The crowd of thousands filled three blocks, from West 61st Street to West 64th Street along Central Park West, as speakers rallied before a march to Times Square.

Linda Salzer, 56, of Cambridge, N.Y., a network engineer, traveled more than two hours to participate. In 2017, she attended the Women’s March on Washington, then participated in a march closer to home in 2018, while skipping last year’s event.

“The movement that started in 2017 got me riled up,” Salzer said, adding that she had since joined the League of Women Voters and other women’s activist groups.

Alana Whitman, 36, of Brooklyn, carried a placard that read, “These boobs were made for marching.” Remembering the emotions of 2017, when Trump had taken office, she said: “No one is less mad now. We might be a bit more tired but we are certainly no less angry and our opinions haven’t changed.”

As the marchers moved down Sixth Avenue, a wet snow began falling and a cold wind picked up. Some protesters said Trump’s policies and what they saw as corruption in his administration’s had also played a role in spurring them to march.

Victoria Mione, 19, of Old Bridge, N.J., a communications major at Fairleigh Dickinson University, was attending her second Women’s March with four of her college friends.

“It’s important to be part of this cause, especially as a young woman. I have a lot of privilege and I need to take a stand,” Mione said. “Also, it’s not just about women. It’s about gun violence, immigration, Black Lives Matter, just everything.”

In Los Angeles, thousands of women demonstrated at Pershing Square and Grand Park. Organizers, which coined the theme “Women Rising,” have for years sought to separate themselves from the national Women’s March organization.

Many marchers carried wire hangers wrapped in pink paper with the #noban hashtag on one side and “Warning: this is a surgical instrument” on the other.

Graphic designer Robin McCarthy said that she felt motivated to design the demonstration hangers after antiabortion “heartbeat bills” were signed into law last year. She and two friends handed them out to demonstrators.

“They’re an awful but visceral reminder,” she said, “and that’s what we want.”

In Washington, protesters left Freedom Plaza just before noon, marching toward the Ellipse and up 17th Street NW toward the White House, where they sang, chanted and danced to the song, “Un violador en tu camino,” a protest anthem penned by Chilean feminist collective Las Tesis.

As she began marching out of Freedom Plaza, Justine Franco, 32, held up a sign with the words “Here for the women of Puerto Rico.” She and her sister already were planning on traveling from New Jersey to D.C. for their first Women’s March in the nation’s capital, but earthquakes in Puero Rico, where her mother and other relatives live, further emboldened her.

Each time a crisis has hit the island since Hurricane Maria, she said she thinks back to the image of Trump throwing paper towels at the crowd in Puerto Rico.

“It enrages me,” she said. “It makes me want to cry.”

Trump, however, wasn’t in D.C. to hear the protesters. The president departed Friday for his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he was spending the weekend.

The marches were the culmination of a week of activities meant to foster a stronger grass-roots movement and support local organizers around the country working on three main issues the Women’s March will focus on this year: climate change, immigration and reproductive rights.

By moving the event’s focus to issues, officials hope to rebuild relationships with disaffected activists and groups that in recent years have cut ties with the organization.

Some Jewish women — weary of an organization that for nearly two years refused to remove former board members accused of aligning themselves with the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam and longtime leader Louis Farrakhan — have shown little interest in returning to the fold, religious leaders have said.

Issues of financial mismanagement and a reputation for being unwilling to aid local groups also have followed the group for years.

The District’s chapter of Black Lives Matter, which is planning events around the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, asked its supporters to boycott the march due to an ongoing conflict with the Women’s March organization. Black Lives Matter activists said the Women’s March failed to make good on promises of inclusion and were critical of scheduling the event on the holiday weekend.

O’Leary Carmona said Friday that the Women’s March has “tried to do better” but failed to meet Black Lives Matters’s needs.

Streets around the White House, the Ellipse and Lafayette Square were expected to reopen about 4 p.m., according to D.C. police.

Vera Haller in New York and Mia Nakaji Monnier in Los Angeles contributed to this report.