The Women’s March Will Die Unless We Get the Hell To Work
I have never felt such pitch-black rage and hopelessness as I felt last week. If election night felt like a death, Friday was the lowering of the casket — sickeningly macabre and terrifyingly final. For people armed with lived experience of the ruination Republican policy brings to all but the most privileged, the present seems terrifying, the future bleak, and the recent past, when things for so many finally got better, may as well have been a daydream. Friday felt like the firing of the starter pistol on a multifaceted tragedy. When a friend texted to ask if I’d be marching the next day, a tepid “Girl I guess *side-eye emoji*” was all I could muster. The thought of not showing up for women and other marginalized communities was anathema, but I’d be going begrudgingly.
But as I went to bed Friday night, my friend Hazel in Sydney sent me dispatches from their Women’s March, already in progress. (Fun fact: Australia is on another astral plane where it is always the future!) I was shocked that thousands of people on the other side of the world were seizing on this moment, too. Hazel’s expressed need to have her spirits lifted, to feel a sense of unity and purpose about something from which she was so vastly geographically removed, shook me out of myself. Maybe people just fucking need each other right now. Maybe I do too.
What I actually found in downtown Chicago ground my walled-off cynicism to dust: a crowd so thick — and diverse — and ever-growing the cops had to cancel the march portion entirely. (It went on anyway, impromptu and ad hoc, for hours.) News quickly circulated through the throngs: the entire world was mobilizing and, in an uncanny echo of the election itself, nobody — not us, not the media, not even the organizers themselves — saw it coming.
I needed this. I imagine we all did. I needed it in order to get the hell over myself, for starters, but also in order to hope again. To millions of women faced with this administration’s virulent misogyny, and the heroic women of color who organized the events, I can’t imagine what it means that the Women’s Marches of 2017 are on track to comprise the biggest protest in American history.
But here’s the difficult, messy truth: The real work of saving ourselves and our country from what has been electorally wrought has none of the affirming positivity of congregating in the streets in pussy hats. For millions of people who participated on Saturday — particularly People of Color and members of the LGBTQ+ community who have been fighting their entire lives — this goes without saying. But for scores of others who are new to the fight, the natural response will be to return home, mark the Facebook calendar for the next protest, and bask in the afterglow. That afterglow will fade. What then?
We must all have an answer to that question, or this moment is dead in the water.
In case you missed it, a new meme was born on Sunday morning. “Alternative facts” is but the latest profoundly stupid but woefully underestimated oddity to come out of the Trump camp. It’s funny, sure (this take is my personal favorite). But it’s also textbook authoritarianism. Bizarro-world misinformation and disinformation, coupled with media ice-outs, are the cornerstone of autocratic regimes. This mélange of fuckery provides a black-out curtain behind which the administration can enact grievous harm with minimal, if any, transparency, by ensuring that what little information makes it to the public is difficult to parse and impossible to trust.
We aren’t completely down the rabbit hole yet, and it may all turn out to be okay. But the writing on the wall says we are likely to witness things in the coming years we’ve never thought possible in our democracy. Fighting them will require resolve that many who attended a march on Saturday have been privileged to never need to muster. (It’s worth noting that it will also require leveraging that privilege for issues that do not personally affect us.) For many more of us, our brains and hearts are already worn out from the fighting we’ve already done.
We’ll need to muster this resolve and get to work anyway, beginning immediately, before the onslaught begins.
Whether you attended a March Saturday or not, this means you.
Here are some ideas how to do so.
Collect Reminders
Remember how you felt Saturday. Find a photo or a video clip that is particularly meaningful or evocative to you, and keep it handy. Bookmark it. Keep it cued up in your tabs, make it your wallpaper, whatever. But burn it into your brain. Here’s mine:
The sheer size of those crowds — especially the ones in strongholds of Republican insanity like Phoenix, where much of my family lives —confirms, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am not alone and that the Trump administration’s gaslighting isn’t working. It puts cracks in my cynicism and allows me to hope. I’m going to watch it every morning.
Remember the Numbers
Shortly after the election, I bought this t-shirt which, aside from looking totes adorbs on me (a-thank you), reminds me of something it seems all too easy to forget:
We’re the majority and we’re still here.
(Quick sidebar: I’m aware that’s the Hillary H. I am not here to discuss whether or not Bernie Sanders would have won, Travis, and I am not here to relitigate the merits of a Jill Stein vote, Susan [Sarandon]. That time has passed. I’m not interested. Pretend the H logo isn’t there. You are an adult.
ANYWAY.)
Let’s look at the numbers:
- 1: The number of countries on Earth that allow subversion of the electoral will of the people via a vile and archaic loophole meant to protect slave-owners
- 2,865,075: the unprecedented margin by which Trump lost the subverted popular vote
- 77,744: the number by which Trump won the aforementioned loophole
That last one is the one that seems to have gone unnoticed. 77,744 Michiganders, Pennsylvanians and Wisconsinites decided this election.
That’s it.
Trump and his team are vastly outnumbered. (They know it too, hence Little Lord Fauntleroy throwing a tantrum from inside his dad’s oversized suit on Saturday.) No matter how bad things get, there are vastly more of us than there are of them.
Say it with me right now:
WE’RE THE MAJORITY AND WE’RE STILL HERE.
Most Important: Get to Work
Your feelings of post-March catharsis aren’t going to save us from dominionist autocracy. If you haven’t already, GET. INVOLVED. NOW.
Call your reps. Every day. Remind them you’re watching them, and that if they don’t actively work to oppose Trump and his Cabinet’s initiatives, they will not have your vote in 2018 or 2020. If your reps are doing a great job with that, thank them and encourage them to continue doing so.
Get on their mailing lists. When they have local community meetings or events, show up. Bring friends. If nobody is taking the mic to address your concerns, take the mic yourself. If necessary, refuse to give the mic up until they answer your questions. Your reps in Congress work for you. Your wages are garnished to pay theirs. Hold them accountable.
Stare at this until it sinks in:
Get involved with your local Democratic party now. If you’re in a safely blue district, sign up to help a nearby swing or red district go blue. (You can find out how to do that at SwingLeft.org.)
If you have it, donate money.
If you have it, donate time.
If you have it in you, run for office yourself.
You don’t have to do all of these, of course. Who has that kind of time and resources? (But if you do have that kind of time and resources, PLEASE do so.) Just pick as many as you can handle and if that’s only one, that’s okay. But just do something. We must show up for each other. If you start to feel overwhelmed, or if you have health, financial or other issues that rob you of bandwidth to be proactive, ask like-minded friends to pick up your slack until you can get back up and fight.
Trump’s coup d’etat won’t be undone without a long, hard fight. But every call you make, every dollar you donate, every meeting you attend moves the needle. It’s long, hard, tedious work. But if Saturday proves anything, it’s that there are enough women, People of Color, LGBTQ+-identifying people, and even…
white straight men who get it (!!11!!) to get it done. So let’s go.
They deride us as “snowflakes,” but they forget one vital thing: Snowflakes melt. And when that happens, they’re all gonna drown.*
We’re the majority and we’re still here.
*With thanks to my friend Jeffrey for this amazing quote.
Below are some resources and organizations I’ve found helpful in getting involved in resisting the Trump agenda and looking toward the 2018 midterms. Get on the mailing lists that interest you and, as President Obama told us a couple weeks ago, “lace up your shoes and get to work!”
If you know of more resources or lead an organization, leave links in the comments, or contact me on Twitter and I’ll add them to the list!
Indivisible: Learn how to impact your Congressional reps and connect with others in your local area
MoveOn.org: Find local action groups in your community and receive training on how to organize others for change
Countable: An app that lets you track Congress’s activity and contact your reps directly, right from the app interface
Flippable: Action plans for flipping seats in the 2018 midterms, delivered to your inbox
Wall of Us: Four concrete acts of resistance emailed to you each week
MPower Change: Women’s March co-chair Linda Sarsour’s organization focused on advocacy and activism for the Muslim-American community
Democracy Spring: A focus on voting rights advocacy and campaign finance reform
SwingLeft: Help change a red/purple Congressional district near you to blue
