This Is Our Moment
I was honored to be invited to speak at the Women’s March on Washington on Saturday. I didn’t end up making it on stage because we ran out of time (and we were all excited to march!), but here are the words I was planning to share.
Sojourner Truth
Susan B. Anthony
Ella Baker
Lucy Parsons
Sylvia Rivera
Audre Lorde
Wilma Mankiller
Dorothy Bolden
Our imperfect democracy, was made stronger by these women. They marched, they organized, and changed our nation. I look out at all of you today and I see them in all of us. Defending and expanding democracy is women’s work.
I bring love and greetings from domestic workers, home care workers and family caregivers around the world who are marching today. We are the unsung heroines who help us care for the most precious parts of our lives — our children, our aging loved ones, our loved ones with disabilities, and our homes. Many of us are immigrants and women of color. And we’re marching today, because our democracy is in crisis, and it needs our care.
We have a message to deliver to the White House and Congress: you will not, on the one hand, call us criminals and rapists, and then leave your children and your parents in our care. You will not call us violent but then characterize actual violent sexual assault as just “locker room talk.” You will never make America Great by dismantling everything that makes us great.
Today is not just another march. No, this one of those moments in a nation’s history when our very soul is in question. . . This is day 1 in the fight of generations — for the soul of the country. There are times in history when we are called upon to work harder and take greater risk — not just for our families, but for the future of the entire nation. This is one of those times. The attacks are already coming on health care and immigration. The administration plans rescind DACA, protections for 800,000 immigrant youth, our DREAMERS.
But we stand ready.
Because we have a vision. We’re marching for the vibrant, multi-racial democracy we know is possible, one that creates family-sustaining jobs in every single community — from NYC to New Mexico, from rural Michigan, to the the Southern tip of Florida.
How do we get there? Today we march. Tomorrow, we turn this momentum into power through organizing. Imagine women voters driving a wave of victories in local, state and federal elections in 2018, electing thousands of women to office, building toward our moment of truth in 2020, when we make this administration a tiny blip in an arc of history where our democracy moves closer to the one of our dreams.
We can make it happen. It’s all within reach. But we need to be building now. Today is not just a march. This is our moment. And we will win.
