Look Back, March Forward
The Women’s March One Year Later
Yesterday was a rough day for many of us. We saw a man who threatened the grace, humanity, and progress we’ve made become president of the United States. We saw someone who marginalized women, the disabled, the LGBT community, and people of color take to the podium and do something we’ve been taught is classless and graceless.
He spiked the ball.
And it hurt to watch, just as much as it did in November when I walked into a bar at 3 a.m. to watch him give his acceptance speech. A bar filled with a handful of men and one woman, who was young, fragile, and upset. She paid her bill and quickly left before Trump took the stage. As she exited, the bartender felt compelled to call her a cunt.
That’s our world now, I thought.
Until today. Today I watched thousands upon thousands of men and women of every possible stripe march peacefully throughout New York City, that man’s hometown. The spirit was infectious. They smiled. They sang. They displayed homemade signs that were clever, poignant, and funny AF. They laughed and they hugged. They reclaimed the word “pussy.”
They were happy.
They filled my heart. They replenished what had been emptied November 8th. They made me proud. They made me remember that we get to decide what the world looks like now. We get to choose what we accept and what we will stand against.
This is my America. They are my people. I love it all.
Now we get to work.
— Jaime Franchi, Long Island Press reporter
The Women’s March was the biggest protest in United States history, with somewhere between three and four million people taking to the streets. But what grabbed us — and the only thing that should grab us, ahem — even more than the numbers were the images. Images of hope, resistance, and strength. There was unexpected relief and joy in recognizing that, no, we were not alone in our fear, our anger, and our outrage. For some, the march was a baptism and for others it was yet another march in a long history of marching because will marching for justice ever end? Will we ever get where we need to go? As we look back at images from that historic day, they remind us that the march might’ve made history, but it is not history. It was a beginning. This year right here? 2018? This is the year we take that riptide of hope, resistance, and strength directly to the polls.
— MARCH ON
Kimberly Harrington is a copywriter and creative director, a contributor to The New Yorker and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and author of AMATEUR HOUR: MOTHERHOOD IN ESSAYS AND SWEAR WORDS out May 1st from Harper Perennial. She is a part of the resistance because come ON.
MARCHROOTS is a project of MARCH ON. We’re working at the national, state, and local levels to harness the power of those who marched on January 21, 2017 and take that passion straight to the polls in 2018 and beyond. We’re not afraid to resist, question everything, reach across the aisle, show up for what we believe in, and laugh to keep from utterly losing it.
Right now the movement needs YOU to take a poll. And hey, while you’re at it, host a party! Operation Marching Orders puts the marchroots — that’s you! — square in the center of the movement. This movement belongs to all of us. Head to www.operationmarchorders.com to register now.
