Women march in Chattanooga to protest the election of President Donald Trump. As a woman with a microphone chanted about power and equality and the need to have it now, now, now, Melody Cromer sat in the front row, nodding and shouting.
Two American flags tied with wire to her camping chair, Cromer joined about 3,000 other people at Coolidge Park on Saturday, hoping their new president would take notice. The march in Chattanooga to protest potential policies of President Donald Trump was among about 670 other cities across the state, the nation and the world.
But Cromer, 57, would only stay for the beginning part, when locals packed the park aside the Tennessee River to make signs, chant and listen to speeches. Her body wouldn’t let her march.
She has a metal plate and six screws in her left foot, the result of a fall from an 8-foot-high dumpster in 1996. And a slip at a store last year left a cracked vertebra and a bulging disc.
Of those gathered, Cromer was an outlier: She voted for Trump in November. She liked that he promised to put more people to work. But between the election and Friday’s inauguration, she regretted her choice.