Five Years Later Women March On

The Women's March on Washington, January 19, 2017--a model of Resistance.

Five years ago, on the eve of the instillation of a slimy fraud, serial rapist and abuser, and would-be fascist strongman when much of the country was paralyzed by dread and despair the Women’s March on Washington filled the National Mall in defiance.  Their numbers dwarfed the inauguration crowds of the Orange Menace the next day.  It was the opening shot of an energized and spreading Resistance that four years later would oust the Resident.  What made it even more remarkable is that it was organized on-line in just a few weeks not by charismatic leaders or media celebrities but by ordinary women, many of them entirely new to activism.  It represented a genuine from the bottom up peoples movement that spread across the country sparking hundreds of sister marches.

From the beginning the March was characterized by devotion to what would become known as intersectionality defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the “interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.”  Representatives of other oppressed and threatened groups and movements including Black Lives Matter; immigrants facing deportation, detention, and family separation; Muslims and other endangered religious minorities; Native American Water Protectors; the LGBTQ community; youth; the differently abled; and others were recognized as essential mutual allies, represented at the rally; and included in leadership.

The Women's March Chicago 2018 with part of the Tree of Life UU contingent including Terry Kappel and Judy Stettner.  Photo by Linda Di.

The March was defiantly feminist but not separatist.  Men were welcome to attend and lend support to the agenda laid out by women.  In some of the Sister Marches as many as 25% of participants were male, some even wearing the knit pink pussy caps that became a symbol of the March.

In the years since the Women’s March has endured despite enormous challenges and no little controversy and internal dissent.  Major marches were staged again January of 2018 and 19.  Special March on the Vote events were held in the fall of 2018 before the mid-term elections that recaptured the House of Representatives.  In 2021 and again this year the March faced the challenges of the raging Coronavirus pandemic that disrupted and discouraged mass street events. 

Besides the pandemic challenges have included controversy over electoral politics particularly how closely to identify with Democrats, generational strains between older second wave feminists and younger women, leadership turmoil over allegations of antisemitism by Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American activist and Tamika Mallory, an African-American gun control activist who had voiced support for Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam; a split between National leadership and organizers of many sister marches; and how much and what kind of corporate sponsorship to accept.

Despite it all today kicks off Women’s March Global 2022 events and activities which will run through March 8.  They write:

This January 21st, let’s unite again in solidarity to begin a new phase of activism. January 21st’s march will show our solidarity and strength once again. Even though we come from different places and we have different struggles, we all have the same overarching goal for equality and justice. As Audre Lorde said, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own” and so, this January 21st, show up and fight, not only for yourself but also for your sisters.  Follow us and be one of the first to know how you can take part – either on the streets or in the comfort of your home on Twitter at #WeWontBackDown or at https://fb.me/e/1OFzPllFV.

The March also outlined an ambitious agenda for 2022 in an email to supporters yesterday.  It includes: 

·         Growing our Women2Women Circles so we can wield our feminist power at the local level and drive change in our communities.

·         Recruiting volunteers to text & make phone calls to voters leading up to the 2022 midterm elections.

·         Providing trainings through our Feminist Fundamentals Short Course so that Women’s Marchers can gain the basic foundation you need to organize, activate and mobilize your community.

·         Scaling our Digital Defenders program so we can continue combating misinformation online and make sure everyone has access to the information they need to survive this pandemic.

·         Resisting against every attack the anti-abortion movement has planned this year and building pressure on Congress to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act.

·         Putting pressure on our politicians to support the feminist policies we need passed in Congress to survive the current crises we face.

·         Holding corporations accountable for the political campaigns they’ve financially supported and calling for corporate social responsibility.

·         Planning safe and Covid-conscious mass mobilizations so we can demonstrate our collective power as we resist attacks on our feminist values. 

Protesting an Inauguration—What a Difference Four Years Make

The Women's March on Washington, January 21, 2020.

Four years ago after Donald Trump won an Electoral College victory over Hillary Clinton despite the fact that she won a clear majority of the popular vote outrage spread quickly, especially among women.  Feminists and their allies deplored the ascent of the misogynist, serial sex abuser, chronic liar, business fraud, charlatan, and sociopathic egomaniac.  So they did something about it.

Just a day after the 2016 election Teresa Shook of Hawaii created a Facebook event and invited friends to march on Washington in protest.  Several similar posts were made independently and soon the women and some feminist men discovered each other and began cooperating.  None of them were marquee names in the Women’s Movement, the Clinton campaign, or the Democratic Party.  In addition to middle class white women an informal core group of organizers included African Americans and other People of Color, immigrants, Muslims, members of the LGBTQ communities, and other oppressed groups.

The logo of the Women's March on Washington.

Their efforts were a classic example of bottom-up organizing taking advantage of new social media tools to create an organic movement.  And they did it in an astonishingly short time.  As planning went forward on a March scheduled for January 21, the two days after the inauguration organizers did get the endorsement and technical support from major organizations including Planned Parenthood, the Natural Resources Defense Council, AFL–CIO, Amnesty International USA, the Mothers of the Movement, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the National Organization for Women, MoveOn.org, Human Rights Watch, Code Pink, Black Girls Rock!, the NAACP, the American Indian Movement, Emily’s List, Oxfam, Greenpeace USA, and the League of Women Voters.  All of those organizations would help recruit marchers from their own memberships and be represented on the speaking platform the day of the march.  But so did scores of other less well known and local groups from a broader movement that was beginning to characterize itself as the Resistance.

March organizer made it clear from the beginning that they planned to adhere to “the nonviolent ideology of the Civil Rights movement.”  In addition to keep the momentum for change going instead of being dissipated in a one-time cathartic event organizers posted the 10 Actions for the first 100 Days campaign for joint activism.

Despite Trump's claim that his inauguration drew the biggest crowds in history--the first Big Lie of his administration--the Women's March dwarfed his pathetic turnout.

While organizers had originally expected over 200,000 people, the march ended up drawing between 440,000 to 500,000 in Washington D.C.  It dwarfed the feeble turn-out for Trump’s inauguration by at least three to one and probably more.

The march was famous for the knitted pink pussy cat caps that many of the marchers wore initiated by Krista Suh and Jayna Zweiman.  More than 100,000 people down-loaded the pattern for the cap and dozens of small providers vended them on line.  The design was inspired by the resemblance of the top corners of the hats to cat ears and attempts to reclaim the derogatory term pussy, from Trump’s widely reported 2005 remarks that women would let him “grab them by the pussy.”

Women flying all the way from Alaska showed off their Pink Pussy hats on the flight.

In addition to the hundreds of thousands pouring into the nation’s capital for the protest, hundreds of officially unrelated sister marchers were organized in cities big and small across the United States, Canada, and the world, including a massive march in Chicago which I joined along with three Metra train carloads from McHenry County.  Between 3,267,134 and 5,246,670 people participated in these marches in this country, approximately 1.0 to 1.6 % of the U.S. population making it by far the largest mass protest in American history. Worldwide participation has been estimated at over seven million.

Marching with women of Tree of Life UU Congregation to the rallying point of the Chicago Women's March on January 21, 2017

Nor did the movement fade away.  Annual marches continued and in 2016 there was a special Fall March to the Polls event to boost registration and voting in the midterm elections.

This year due to the Coronavirus pandemic and the heavy security in Washington after the storming of the Capitol by Trump’s minions and White supremacist insurrectionaries, organizers discouraged mass events.  Instead a number of virtual events were posted around the country.

Compare a genuine mass movement of the people to the shady plot to overthrow democracy this year.  Don’t let anyone try to tell you, as some right-wing media is trying to do, that the two events had anything in common.

Beyond Pink Pussy Hats—Three Years Later the Women’s March and its Sister Actions are Roaring Back

In 2017 on the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration when progressives, liberals, and social justice advocates seem both befuddled by the outcome of the 2016 elections and were said to be demoralized and in disarray, The Women’s March in Washington and sister marches across the globe drew more than 5 million people into the streets including an astonishing 1.5% the U.S. population.  It was the largest single day protest in American history and helped usher in a broader movement of resistance that has been marked by mass protests on issues including gun violence, climate change, immigration rights, LGBTQ rights, Black Lives Matter, income inequality, and Medicare for All.

Now in 2020 with another national election looming and the nation embroiled in seemingly permanent crisis and hard fought for rights and protections being attacked and dismantled before our eyes—women’s reproductive freedom, environmental and labor regulations and protections, basic voting rights, and the whole social safety net—women and their allies are ready to take to the streets again this Saturday, January 18. 

The Women's March Washington in 2017 

The original Women’s March was unique in several important ways.  It was initiated not by any existing organization or coalition and without a charismatic leader.  Instead it blossomed from on-line chats of ordinary women, many of them with no protest experience or connections to past activism in the days following the election.  It was hastily put together by volunteers who had never met each other on an ad hoc basis—women who said “I can do that!” and they did.  It had no budget beyond the personal purses of the organizers and then a sea of small individual donations raised on social media.  While the march in Washington was coming together, women in major cities—New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles—and smaller cities, towns, and suburbs spontaneously got together to plan local events for those who could not go to Washington—the so-called sister marches.  

There were tensions between feminists who had dreamed of seeing Hillary Clinton inaugurated as the first woman president, and progressive who had supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries and had been at best tepid in support of Clinton.  Despite some back and forth blaming and name calling, both sides agreed to come together and ended up marching side-by-side.  

Minority women were put off by the largely white middle class original organizers who they feared would overlook or marginalize their specific needs and demands.  But like the little poem for which this is named they “cast a circle that drew them in.”  Pains were taken to include Black, Latino, LGBTQ, immigrant, youth, Muslim, and Jewish voices in the emerging leadership and to feature them prominently in the rallies.  Although far from perfect the Women’s March modeled the new era of Intersectionality.

Many thought the movement would wither after the first protest, that the relentless assaults of Trumpism or simple burn out would dissipate their energy much as the Occupy movement faded after a year or so intensive action.   But as in the popular slogan of Hillary supporters said, “She [they] persisted.”  If some grew tired or discouraged, there were more to step to the plate.  A Marches were held again in January 2018 and 2019.  

Part of the Tree of Life UU contingent at the Chicago Women's March in 2018, Carol Alfus (back to camera), Terry Kappel, Karen Dees Meyer, Marcia Johnson, Laura Zalnis, Judy Stettner, the Old Man,and  Katie Mikkelson. Photo by Linda Di.

There were, of course, controversies and even splits.  One of the four National Co-chairs of the first march, Linda Sarsour, the Executive Director of the Arab American Association of New York, was accused of anti-Semitism for her remarks criticizing Israel and in support of Palestinian rights.  Some Jewish organizations, donors, sponsors, and politicians demanded that she be removed as a co-chair and that her views be explicitly denounced.  When the other co-chairs refused some withdrew support of the Women’s March and publicly attacked it.  In the aftermath many of the Sister March organizations cut what ties they had to the Washington March or issued disclaimers.  Inviting anti-abortion feminist groups to participate or co-sponsor was criticized by Planned Parenthood and others and the anti-abortion groups were quietly expunged from sponsorship listings on web sites.

On the other hand some of the national Women’s March leadership and more radical supporters have criticized some of the local Sister Marches with becoming captive to the Democratic Party and candidates to the exclusion of alternative voices.

This year enthusiasm for a new Women’s March has been building.  In its call to action the 2020 Women’s March—Women Rising Organizers wrote:

Three years of marching, training, organizing, and building power – it’s all been leading up to this. In 2020, we have the chance to strengthen the movement we started three years, and to unite together in the face of continued attacks on our bodies, our rights, our immigrant communities, and our planet. 

This year, we aren’t just marching. We’re putting our bodies on the line hand in hand with other mass movements. 

With your help, we can make this the largest day of action the country has ever seen, and demand that our leaders be held accountable, protect our planet, and fight for our rights.

The march has announced a week of actions leading up to Saturday’s March highlighting four key issues—climate change, reproductive rights and health care availability, immigration justice, and “No War in Iran—Remove Trump.”

For more information on the Washington March or to locate a local action visit http://womensmarch.com/2020-march.

In Illinois there will be a major march in Chicago forming at 11 am Saturday in Grant Park.  Last year the Chicago March skipped a January event after hosting a March to the Polls event in October 2016 before the mid-term elections citing the short turn-around to another January march.  This year they will also host another March to the polls next fall.

There will also be several local marches throughout the state and metropolitan area.  Many of the members of Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenry will be participating for the second year in the Women’s March McHenry County-Women Rising 2020 on Woodstock Square starting at 12:30 pm co-hosted by McHenry County NOW with support from the Democratic Party of McHenry County, McHenry County Progressives, and Indivisible.  Last year hundreds turned out on the Square despite a major over-night snow storm and frigid temperatures.  Tree of Life marchers will gather at the entrance to the Square on Johnson Street across from the Old Court House.  We will be marching behind our yellow TOL Side of Love banner.  Bring signs, warm clothing, and a passion for justice!

Lisa Messinger and the Old Man with a Tree of Life UU congregation banner at the Woodstock Women's March in the bitter cold last January.  Photo by Trish Schaffer.