Washington (CNN) Beyond the empty seats filled a day earlier by President Donald Trump's VIPs, far past the stage where celebrities and activists headlining Saturday's Women's March took turns delivering campaign-style speeches, a smaller gathering of protesters blocks from Pennsylvania Avenue quietly strained for a view of the White House's South Portico.

The mass demonstrations that consumed Washington on Trump's first full day in office were a defiant and at times wide-eyed display -- an implicit rebuke to the portrait of "American carnage" that colored Trump's grim address . Thousands of marchers, women and men, wore pink knit "pussy hats" and waved mischievous signs written over with warnings to the man whose new home they had effectively choked off from the city.

But they also arrived as tourists -- and gazed on the capital's formidable architecture with a mix of anger and awe.

For many, the march represented a first foray into pavement politics. Enraged by the new president's remarks about women on the campaign trail -- and his bragging, caught in a 2005 video, that he "grabs" women "by the pussy" -- they lashed out against the administration with the passion of converts.

"This is actually my first protest," Braydee Euliss, who drove to Washington from Muncie, Indiana, told CNN. "I'm here now because I not only stand to lose personally, but women collectively and women of color especially, stand to lose, too."

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