Anti-Donald Trump protesters march on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Trump International Hotel the day after the election. (Photo by Alex Edelman)

As the District careens toward Donald Trump’s inauguration, a group of local activists is doing everything in its power to make sure that the day’s events are besieged with bedlam.

“The number of counter protesters showing up is off the charts,” says Legba Carrefour, a participant with the D.C. Counter-Inaugural Committee, which is organizing actions under the banner of DisruptJ20. “We want to undermine the legitimacy of the incoming administration by ruining the inauguration.”

It is one of around a dozen groups that plan to express their deep displeasure with the results of the election. The biggest and most high-profile, of course, is the Women’s March on Washington, scheduled for the day after inauguration.

What began as a grassroots event has been marshaled into an organized demonstration by experienced activists. A starting point has been identified, and Planned Parenthood signed on yesterday to lend its staff and expertise with large-scale mobilizations. “By all accounts we expect that to be a very peaceful and successful demonstration,” Interim D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said on News Talk today.

DisruptJ20 is going for the opposite effect.

Throughout the day, hundreds or thousands of protesters plan to paralyze morning traffic into the city, create blockades at checkpoints, march without permits, and possibly disrupt the parade. There will also be a permitted rally for people who don’t wish to risk arrest, starting at Columbus Circle at noon.

“The main thing to keep in mind with the stuff we’re doing is the impact,” Carrefour says. “Let’s say 100,000 people show up to the Women’s March. 100,000 at the Women’s March is going to have a lot less impact than if you get 1,000 people showing up and doing blockades. We can do a lot with few people.”

The group is providing housing for up to 1,000 people at this point—along with food, a medic team, trainings, and legal support—but even organizers aren’t sure exactly how many protesters to expect.

Around 15 core participants have been working on inauguration protest plans since before they even knew the victor, but interest skyrocketed after Trump defied all exceptions.

“None of us have been in a situation quite like this,” Carrefour says. A few hundred people showed up to protest George Bush’s inauguration in 2005, but he expects opposition to Trump will far eclipse that.

The closest analogous situation, he surmises, were the anti-globalization protests in D.C. of 2000 and 2002, but only a handful of the DisruptJ20 organizers were there for those. “I was,” Carrefou says with a laugh, “but I’m old.”

And in the intervening years, social media has helped document and spread the word about and protests, while D.C. police agencies had to reform how they handle mass mobilizations.

“We have demonstrations all the time,” Newsham said on “News Talk,” declining to give an estimate of how many protesters the city will see. “This police department is the best police department in the country for handling those types of things.”

Though the majority of the DisruptJ20’s core organizers are “people who would be described as anarchists,” according to Carrefour, they are welcoming in progressives and liberal groups “who don’t share the same politics as we do, but share the same values.”

The leaves their message broad and tied to actions. “We’re talking about no peaceful transition,” Carrefour says. On President Barack Obama’s call for a calm, successful transition, he adds: “We really reject that. It does nothing more than reinforce power against the oppressed.”