The Case for Marching

I’m going to the women’s march in D.C. on January 21, 2017 and I’m taking my family. Many of my friends and relatives are going — regardless of gender or race or ethnicity or sexual orientation or ability. If they can’t go to DC, they are marching in other cities — in San Francisco, Boston, NYC, Chicago, Oakland, Cleveland, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, Philadelphia, etc. If you are on the fence, or fear that the march will achieve nothing, or that it’s not sufficiently strategic, or that it’ll just be a one-time, pseudo-feel-good display, or that it’s ultimately a waste of time, please take a moment to consider some arguments for attending (which will include what I hope is a refutation of your doubts). My own view is that turning this march, along with the coordinated, simultaneous marches in cities across across the country, into the largest protest in the history of the United States — a raw display of activist force by a mobilized and enraged citizenry — is a civic imperative, and I beg you to join in making it happen. Here’s why.

We Need To Tell the World, and the Rest of the Country, that Millions View Trump’s Conduct and Agenda As Unacceptable and that He Has No Mandate

This is your chance to show and tell the country, and world — not some pollster, not your best friend, not your sad reflection in the mirror — that this man is unacceptable. His bigotry and ignorance; his gratuitous cruelty; his corruption and nepotism; his flagrant conflicts of interest; his misogyny and racism; his narcissism and pettiness; his constant lies; his radically anti-democratic agenda; his reckless disregard for national and global security; his disregard for the Constitution and constitutional norms; his embrace of torture and threats to the press; his inability to understand that a president’s role is to work for all Americans; his belief that the millions of citizens who oppose him are his “enemies”; his fundamental lack of decency or kindness — the man is a disgrace, and his election is an abomination, a source of shame, fear, anxiety, and anger for the millions of Americans whom he has only just begun to traumatize.

A march will not change the fact that he has, in fact, been elected, regardless of what happened with Comey or Putin or Wikileaks or the press or Jill Stein voters or those who didn’t vote at all or misogyny or racism or whatever reason or combination of reasons why his 78,000 vote victory in PA, WI and MI combined carried the day. This rancid, abusive sexual predator and dictator-worshipper will be inaugurated on January 20, 2016. We need to show that even though we accept that it happened and that he will, in fact, be the next president, he and his agenda are unacceptable. Only a powerful show of force across the country will send this message. Attending a protest or a rally is not the same as a vote, but it demonstrates commitment and it makes us visible. That visibility sends its own message, and the message goes out to many audiences:

The March is a Message to Trump and His Enablers

Trump is already painfully aware that he lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, or 2% of the vote; that he won only 46% of the votes cast; that under 25% of voting-eligible Americans chose him; that he was shellacked in his home state of New York and utterly eviscerated in his home city, where Hillary won 80% of the votes; that Hillary received the largest number of votes for a candidate in U.S. history except for Barack Obama in 2008. He knows he comes into office as the least popular president in the history of measuring this question. These are not facts he enjoys, as he has made clear on Twitter multiple times, and Bannon and Conway can’t spin that away. At the same time, his transition team lacks sufficient private funds to pay all its members’ salaries, and entertainers of any repute have utterly shunned performing at the inauguration, robbing him of the triumphant spectacle he doubtless wants to present. The message of hope we saw in 2008 with Obama, of a nation overcoming a sordid past, and that we could have had with Hillary, as the first female president, will be sorely absent from the inauguration of a despised, orange businessman who has spent his life helping himself at the expense of others, with his false promises of draining the swamp already drowned in that very swamp, which is now overflowing.

It is impossible to know whether he will feel any sense of humility or awe or personal shame at being inaugurated in the presence of former presidents and first ladies, none of whom supported him and many of whom publicly repudiated him, recognizing him for the threat to our republic that he is. Perhaps he will view it as some sort of acceptance or support for him, rather than as the support for the peaceful transition of power that their attendance — especially Hillary and Bill’s — actually represents.

What we can expect, however, is that, on top of his loss of the popular vote and the very public rejection he is facing from the entertainment industry, it will be deeply galling to Trump if he sees that the number of people at the protest rivals or surpasses the number of people who attend the inauguration itself.

And while hitting Trump in the only place that matters — his open wound of an ego — will underscore the message of just how unpopular he is, the march will also serve as both a message and a warning that America is not some company that he can simply dictate to, that we are here and we are not going away and we will not be silenced. To the contrary, he will be fought every step of the way. This only just the beginning, and he is entitled to no benefit of the doubt. He forfeited all such benefit when he campaigned on bigotry and lies, and because those lies continue, because his lack of transparency and conflicts of interest are staggering, and because he has made no effort whatsoever to act like a leader and try to heal this nation. We will fight for this country and for ourselves; we will not cede it or our rights to him. It is critical that he receive that message. Masses of citizens protesting across America is an actual spectacle that he cannot lie his way out of in a tweet.

The March is a Message to the GOP

The Republican agenda of destroying the Affordable Health Care Act, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and the food stamp program, of denying women reproductive rights, of failing to address gun violence or the need for criminal justice reform, of undermining public education and using the public trust to strip benefits from needy taxpayers and redistribute wealth into the hands of the ultra-rich, of dismantling regulations on banks to make it easier to risk the entire economy and engage in fraud, of handing over our national parks to corporations, is at odds with the desires of the overwhelming majority of Americans. Their agenda is deeply unpopular, even with their own voters, and the march sends the message that we will not sit idly by as this country is turned into a kleptocracy for billionaires while the rest of us suffer. We are voters; we will show up; we will never repeat 2010. A huge protest unlike any this country has ever seen at the beginning of a president’s term makes it crystal clear: there is no mandate for Trump and there is most certainly no mandate for you, a party that has gerrymandered and suppressed the vote to stay in power, and only wins by cleaving social wedges between progressives and conservatives even as it ensures that corporations and the richest among us are the only ones whose economic interests are protected. You ram your agenda down the throats of voting Americans at your peril. You see these numbers that turned out in the cold in January? We are coming for you at your town halls, in your offices, at your events, and then in 2018.

The March is a Message to Democratic Politicians

The Democrats need to see and hear just how enraged and mobilized we are. Big numbers support the mandate they have from Clinton’s popular vote victory, and should push them to fight Trump and the Republican agenda with ferocity. We need them to see we expect them to do whatever it takes to stop Trump and the GOP from eroding our rights, dismantling the nation’s social safety net, destroying the environment, and handing this country over to billionaires. Our numbers will underscore the Democratic message and show Democrats that while they are certainly fighting for principles, for people’s lives, for what’s right — they are also fighting for their own ability to remain in office. Because if they do not fight for us, we will dump them.

The March is a Message to Each Other — A Statement of Resolve and a Celebration of Hope and Resistance and American Values

There is value in and of itself in coming together with others to express shared values and concerns, in a public protest which, by its very nature, is a celebration of the bedrock of our democratic nation — the First Amendment, which guarantees our right to speak and to assemble. Trump’s election threatens these values, with his hints that he will use his power to pursue personal vendettas and to go after the press; with his worst supporters’ penchant for guns and violence; with his strongman, authoritarian treatment of protestors at his own rallies; with his plans to use a private security force like the dictator of a pariah state. A huge protest allows us to see each other, and to know that we are not alone; that we number in the millions; that we are present all over this country, in “red” states and in “blue”; that our rights to protest and to fight for our rights and those of others are the sacred and moral rights that have allowed this country to transcend its own moral failings — slavery, disenfranchisement of women, discrimination against LGBTQIA people, child labor, Jim Crow — and aspire to do better and in fact to do better; that these values and morals are deeply, fundamentally American and we will fight for them together.

We will derive strength and nourishment from each other. From seeing the rainbow of human beings who show up to attend and stand in solidarity and fight to retain our freedoms. From witnessing a display of citizen activism and strength. The value of camaraderie and joining in support for a common cause cannot be underestimated. The march does more than tell the world that we are angry as hell; it is a way to reaffirm for ourselves that we are not alone in our anger, and that we are willing to come together to support and emotionally nourish ourselves and this country.

For those who dismiss the march as lacking in strategic focus, or not making a clear demand, or not tying those numbers into a concrete, measurable action plan or a legislative victory, I say this: so what? That’s no reason not to go. Just change your expectation and see the march for what it is and can be, not for what it isn’t, and recognize that the energy and strength that participants and viewers draw from watching those numbers on TVs and phones across the country is not quantifiable, but will translate into greater motivation, engagement, and activism. This march, if it has record-breaking attendance in DC and across the country, will provide sustenance and hope to millions: the resistance is real. It is us. And we’re not going away and this country still belongs to us too. We are visible. We have hope. We will fight. And we will ultimately prevail.

#rise #indivisible #whyImarch