In January 1969, a counter-inaugural protest was organized by various feminist groups, taking place in Washington D.C. to demonstrate against the inauguration of Richard Nixon as President of the United States. W.I.T.C.H. members arrived from New York, appropriating some of the New York Radical Feminists' banners – which were emblazoned with the declaration of "Feminism Lives" – and replacing it with their own word, "WITCH", in crayon. Rumors circulated at the protest that W.I.T.C.H. members had planned to pull the radical feminist speaker Shulamith Firestone down from the podium when she had been planned to speak; they disagreed with her vocal criticism of those men who were involved in the leftist movement. After the protest, W.I.T.C.H. members subsequently sent a letter to "the Guardian" repudiating Firestone's calls for women's liberation groups to divorce themselves from the wider left-leaning social movement in U.S. society. In this letter, it described women's liberation as "part of a general struggle; we are as essential to the movement as it is to us". It further reprimanded Firestone for her vocal attacks of men who were part of the movement, stating that "directing ourselves against men... only reinforces the oppressive pattern of women defining themselves through men".