America Goes for a Walk
The Women’s March was not just a message to the new administration. Perhaps more importantly, the Women’s March was a message to ourselves.
It’s true what they say about going for a walk. When you’re in desperate need of some perspective — when everything feels like it’s coming at you too fast — a brisk stroll to get the blood moving can do wonders. Sometimes it’s most helpful to walk alone. Sometimes it’s good to have a friend. Sometimes it’s good to have 2.9 million friends.
Yesterday, America went for a walk, and while of course I can only speak for myself, I think we all feel a little better.
On Friday evening, I felt truly despondent. I had ended the previous night half-drunk in a heap with my back against my kitchen cabinets, descending into melancholic discussions of moral relativism. I had a profound lack of faith in the goodness of anything and felt sure of nothing except futility. I spent the day of the inauguration watching muted livestreams of the funereal proceedings in tiny windows on Facebook. I like to imagine that it was just as silent on the streets of Washington as the motorcade passed gloweringly by mostly empty grandstands.
On Saturday morning, my partner and I walked down the similarly mostly empty streets of Cambridge. As we entered Harvard Yard, I became aware of more people — some in twos and threes, some in larger groups, but very few walking alone. It may have been my imagination or wishful thinking, but I remember noticing that they all seemed to be going in the same direction, towards the T. We descended the steps into the station behind a group of women with three girls of around eight or nine, each carrying handmade signs. Out of habit, I moved to get around them as they dawdled at the bottom of the steps. We rounded the corner and found a glut of people clambering for the ticket machines. Pink hats and scarves and shirt collars screamed from their otherwise typically dour New England clothes. And they were all smiling.
By some estimates, the Boston Women’s March was attended by over 150,000 concerned citizens (although “concerned” may be putting it mildly). The MBTA, in typical fashion, was utterly unprepared. But even though the only way to be guaranteed a spot on the Red Line was to take an outbound train and wait for it to turn around and head back into the city, the atmosphere could only be described as jubilant. We couldn’t hear any of the speakers, but we joined in the periodic cheers anyway. Someone in a black skirt and a green army jacket climbed onto a fence and led a few chants. A young woman behind us passed around a sheet of round stickers that people applied to their cheeks like Raggedy Ann. Signs ranged from the absurd (“I’ve Seen Better Cabinets at IKEA”) to the serious (“Democracy Requires Dissent”) to the regionally appropriate (“Trump Is a Yankees Fan”).
The Women’s March was not just a message to the new administration; everything about the new president suggests that he is incapable of listening to it anyway. Perhaps more importantly, the Women’s March was a message to ourselves. We had to remind ourselves that we are many, that no matter how much those in power may shake their fists and attempt to intimidate and silence us, their ability to govern is contingent upon our willingness to be governed. Coverage of the march overshadowed much of the blatant malarkey trickling out of the White House during Trump’s first full day in office, but the few pieces of news that did manage to slip into my news feed between march photos failed to produce the same hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach that I had felt only a day earlier watching the inaugural parade. If the women of this movement can organize an event like this in the same amount of time Trump and his cronies had to create a floundering, flailing presidential transition, then we have much to be hopeful for. They can’t take on this many of us all at once.
Of course, this feeling will not last without work. Raising awareness and demanding media attention will only get us so far (think of the Occupy movement under a much more favorable administration). As Micah White reported in The Guardian, even before January 21, the Women’s March organizers already had concerns about how to sustain the momentum and energy of the day.
Today, the Women’s March took the first step by launching their 10 Actions / 100 Days campaign. But the burden of resisting the Trump administration cannot fall exclusively on those with the wherewithal (and time and resources and connections) to organize a national march. A movement needs both leaders and foot soldiers, to be sure, but the more of us who take even a small measure of initiative on our own, the better. As a Bay Area activist friend of mine said on Facebook, if marchers “don’t 1) give a stranger [their] contact [information] or 2) get a contact from a stranger, then the movement will end when you go home.”
Crowded subways and record-breaking congestion notwithstanding, the Women’s March was generally a comfortable protest. It was attended by smiling families joining together in solidarity, and to my knowledge, there have been no major reports of widespread property damage, aggressive counter-protests, or clashes between protesters and police.
On this last point, it’s not hard to find an explanation that some may call cynical but that I imagine most people of color would nod along to: the crowds, as evidenced by the pictures, were teeming with white people (myself included, of course). I saw a photo of a marcher with a sign that read, “I’ll see all you nice white ladies at the next #BlackLivesMatter protest, right?” We — and I’m addressing myself as much as my fellow marchers — will need to show up when it’s inconvenient, when it’s uncomfortable, when tensions are high and there are no friendly organizers in orange vests telling us where to line up and when to start marching.
I say this not as an experienced activist with a long history of civil disobedience, but as someone who knows I can do better. We cannot allow the elation we feel at having been part of something — as real and as powerful as that may be — to lie untended in ourselves, where it will wither from exposure to “alternative facts.” The Trump administration will not let up, so in this one instance, we must follow their lead.
As my partner and I and thousands of our friends turned the corner from Arlington Street onto Boylston yesterday, a man picked up a trumpet and, pointing the elegantly tarnished bell up at the steeple of the Arlington Street Church, proceeded to play “We Shall Overcome” with an Armstrongesque waver in his tone. Almost as soon as he finished, the church bells picked up the melody — in the same key, even. Emboldened by the warm resonance of the bells, the marching crowd all began to sing. I thought to myself, how quickly things can spread.
