Eight years ago, Baltimore served as a transportation hub for those traveling to a Washington that was thrumming with protests and marches as Donald Trump entered office for the first time.

This time, as the Republican billionaire president-elect takes the oath of office again Monday, the resistance is subdued.

A few dozen sign-toting demonstrators trickled through Baltimore’s Penn Station early Saturday, bound for the People’s March, an anti-Trump rally that began in 2017 as the Women’s March.

This year’s event lacked the energy of the earlier years, some travelers acknowledged.

“It feels like the joy is not quite here in the same way,” said Francine Byrne, who flew in from Oakland, California.

During the original Women’s March, Penn Station overflowed with protesters, and Byrne waited in hourslong lines for a bus. This time, she and her 16-year-old son easily grabbed a MARC commuter train at a sparsely filled station.

Held the day after Trump’s first inauguration, the 2017 Women’s March drew an estimated 500,000 demonstrators to the National Mall. Millions more took part in sister marches across the country, including in Baltimore, Annapolis and Frederick. At the time, it was considered the largest single-day protest in U.S. history.

Trump’s policies during his first administration attracted vigorous protests. His nomination of three conservative Supreme Court justices set the stage for the high court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending the national right to an abortion. Years of outrage and congressional and criminal investigations of Trump culminated in his defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris, who was seeking to become the nation’s first female president.

Ahead of Trump’s return to the White House, there were no permitted inauguration protests over the weekend in Baltimore, and the only two People’s March events in Maryland appeared to be in Cecil County’s Elkton and in Chestertown on the Eastern Shore. About 120 attended, according to those events’ organizers.

To many, the lack of fervor is a sign that the left is fatigued and disillusioned. Or that Trump opponents have lost faith in what mass demonstrations can accomplish.

Donovan Boson, a development officer with the Pride Center of Maryland, said the LGBTQ organization was treating Trump’s inauguration as “a day of solitude.”

Katie Wilkins, a leader with the Baltimore chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice, a group that mobilizes white people to fight systemic racism, planned to tune Inauguration Day out entirely.

“I’m not sure that this is the good activist answer, but I’m going to pretend it’s not happening,” Wilkins said.

On Monday evening, the Baltimore chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation plans to hold a rally outside City Hall for worker, immigrant and women’s rights, among other causes, though organizers worried frigid temperatures might diminish turnout.

About 50 local activists gathered in a Hampden church basement Saturday to paint banners and signs for the rally — and to practice wielding a large puppet of a two-headed snake: one head depicting Trump; the other, outgoing President Joe Biden.

The protest would serve as “a condemnation of the Trump agenda and all of his plans but also the system that’s allowed Donald Trump to be elected,” said Mike Marinelli, an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

Local groups that organized protests around Trump’s first inauguration, including Progressive Maryland and the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, said they didn’t plan demonstrations this time. Neither did the Latino Racial Justice Circle or the Pride Center of Maryland.

Instead, many left-leaning groups said they were gearing up for bigger fights over the next four years.

Dana Vickers Shelley, the ACLU of Maryland’s executive director, planned to spend Inauguration Day away from her television. She was considering driving to the Eastern Shore to be around water and to visit the Harriet Tubman Museum & Educational Center in Cambridge.

After that, she said, the ACLU was ready to vigorously defend groups that Trump attacked throughout his campaign, including immigrants and transgender people.

“We know what to expect, and we are preparing for it,” Shelley said.

Wilkins said Standing Up for Racial Justice was preparing to push back against Trump’s mass deportation efforts. The group was especially focused on how to stop enforcement and implementation of the plan at the local level.

“We did have people who were going to the People’s March, and things like that are a great way to bring people into the movement,” Wilkins said. “But I feel like where we can make more change is at the local level and in the long term.”

While protests around Trump’s inauguration lacked the enthusiasm of 2017, many still believed demonstrations serve a purpose.

That was the sense of some at Penn Station on Saturday. Molly Power said protests do more than make a statement. Headed to the People’s March with signs that said, “Hate Does Not Make America Great” and “When You Elect a Clown, Expect a Circus,” the 26-year-old Mount Vernon resident said marching gave her a sense of purpose.

“We’re pretty outraged at all of the things that have happened in the past couple months,” Power said. “And we couldn’t just stay home and not do anything.”

Added her mother, Nancy Wolfe, who traveled from New York City: “I don’t know what [the People’s March] is going to actually do, but you feel supported and feel like maybe we can get through the next four years.”

Baltimore Banner reporter Emily Opilo contributed reporting to this story.