When former President Donald Trump was first elected, shocked liberals organized historic nationwide protests the day after his inauguration in 2017, which drew an estimated 2.3 million attendees. The groups that organized the protest marches became a major organizing avenue for the creation of local level resistance groups that pressured congressional lawmakers to block Trump’s agenda.

With President-elect Donald Trump scheduled to be inaugurated again on Monday, tens of thousands of people will be headed to protest his election at events scheduled not just in the nation's capital but also across the country.

It’s unclear whether the protests planned Saturday and Monday will match the 2017 outpouring of people and lasting impact . Still, advocacy groups say they have spent months working together hoping to seize the moment and bring more people into their movement.

Conservatives will also be holding an event in Washington . A Trump “victory rally” is planned for 3 p.m. Sunday at Capital One Arena. Although not tied to the inauguration, the annual anti-abortion rights "March for Life" will occur on Friday January 24 in Washington.

Several other smaller protests are planned in Washington and across the country by groups like the Democratic Socialists of America.

People's March

The largest protest, the People's March, is an outgrowth of the 2017 Women's March, which drew millions of protesters upset over Hillary Clinton's loss and Trump's record of misogynistic comments and accusations of sexual abuse.

It will start in three different locations at 10 a.m. Saturday in Washington, D.C. Each location has a different interest focus like immigration, the right to an abortion and birth control, or climate change, so attendees can connect with a topic they care about, Tamika Middleton, managing director of the Women's March, told USA TODAY. The three marches will convene at the Lincoln Memorial for a rally and a resource fair to help people to immediately get involved in grassroots activism.

Middleton said the organizers are not trying to replicate the 2017 Women's March, but they want to provide an entry point for people who feel inspired to do something after Trump won a second term.

"We're thinking about this as a starting point, but really a starting point to move people into organizations so that we can be ready to respond consistently to the different threats that we see coming, and also to be building the kinds of networks and communities that we'll need to build power and contend for power in the next four years," she said.

The Women's March is among the more than a dozen organizations sponsoring the Washington event and more than 350 similar marches in cities across the country and internationally , including in Columbus, Ohio, Atlanta, Telluride, Coloroado, and Amarillo, Texas.

Felicia Gambino, a civic fellow with DoSomething who is attending the New York People’s March, said she wants the march and rally to be a sign of unity with people who are afraid about what the Trump administration's policies might mean for them.

"It's about showcasing the fact that at the end of the day, we are all people. We are all human, and we all deserve the right to have a country that we believe in, that we support, that we love, have a world that we can look forward to and look towards a brighter future," she told USA TODAY.

Organizers learned from "mass mobilizing" moments like the 2017 Women's March and the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, she said.

"We have been in these conversations over the past several months around absorption. How do we absorb people? How do we grow the movement, how do we grow our base?" she said. "One of the lessons that we've learned, and one of the reflections that we've had across the movement landscape, is that we have to be building our capacity to not just bring people out to the streets, but to keep them in the movement even beyond those moments."

Pamela Smith, the chief of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., said in a news conference Monday that the People’s March will be the biggest protest happening in the city related to the inauguration, but she said no more than 25,0000 people are expected to attend.

Middleton said they have RSVP's from 50,000 people for the Washington march.

National Action Network

The Rev. Al Sharpton’s civil rights advocacy group, National Action Network, is holding a march starting at 10 a.m. on Monday at McPherson Square in Washington, D.C., ending with a rally at the historic Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church about a 7-minute walk away. The group is recognizing the federal holiday in honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Sharpton said in a video invitation to the event that the Trump administration wants to end affirmative action, diversity, equity and inclusion, and abortion rights. “As he takes office to to be president of the United States and has laid out his agenda against rights, we will be taking our oath to keep Martin Luther King’s dream alive and intact,” Sharpton said.

ANSWER Coalition

Also on Monday, the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition is calling for people to rally in about 80 cities nationwide to “defeat Trump’s extreme right-wing agenda.” In addition to a 11 a.m. rally in Washington, D.C., others are scheduled in Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, Pittsburgh, and Phoenix.

Walter Smolarek, a spokesperson for the Answer Coalition, said they have a permit for 5,000 people in Washington.

ANSWER is a left-wing group that has organized protests against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other U.S. military actions, including some that have drawn hundreds of thousands of participants.

The protest and march, which goes from Washington's Malcom X Park to Black Lives Matter plaza near the White House is a protest against Trump, but also against both major political party's embrace of billionaires wants over social safety net programs and the climate, Smolarek said.

Activist Andy Thayer, who has worked since November to help Answer Coalition set up a protest in Chicago Monday, sees the march more as a show of frustration than an anti-Trump protest.

“This is very much a bipartisan protest. It isn’t just a Trump protest, because frankly both parties are the problem,” Thayer said. “The disgust with both major parties runs pretty deep in this country.”

Still they chose to have to end the march Trump Tower because it represents the incoming administration, Thayer said.