A Show of Strength

I want to thank the people who put together the Women’s Marches across the country yesterday. The period from November 9 to January 20 is a very small window to put something like this together, which makes the turnout yesterday all the more extraordinary. I want also to thank everyone who attended; I was not able to physically join you, but I was and am with you in spirit.

The pictures and reports of yesterday’s march, especially the one in Washington DC, took me back fifty years, to my childhood. Media reports yesterday noted that this was not the largest demonstration on record; that was the 1969 march against the Vietnam War. I went to that one as a nine year old boy, with my father and brothers. As happened yesterday, there were differing estimates of the size of the crowd, but it was announced from the stage that we were one million strong. The Vietnam War did not end that year or the next or the next, so we did not end it that day. Likewise, I have already seen articles which I agree with, pointing out that yesterday’s march will not in and of itself stop the agenda of Trump and the Republicans in Congress. But that does not mean that the Women’s March was not important. It was even more important than that demonstration I attended in 1969.

The election of Donald Trump on November 9 was a violation for those of us who opposed him. We were promised a Clinton presidency by all of the pundits and pollsters going in, but it was worse than that. Trump was and is the worst human being ever to win the office of President. He boasted of sexually assaulting women, mocked the disabled, and generally promoted hatred, division, and even violence on his way to victory. A popular majority of almost three million votes was not enough to keep him out. On election night, I and so many others were in shock over the results, and we were not encouraged as the new administration with its venal and unqualified cabinet took shape. Overall, we were feeling demoralized and isolated. So the cause of resisting all of this may not have been directly advanced yesterday, but it was an essential show of strength. Sure, Donald Trump and his friends in Congress know now that we are not going away, and they can not control us. But more importantly, we now have a powerful reminder that we are far from alone. I remember from 1969 what an amazing feeling it is to be part of something this big, and we needed that even more this year than we did then.

The question now, of course, is how do we translate our power into meaningful action? I hope the organizers of yesterday’s demonstrations took advantage of modern technology. If so, they now have a huge list of contacts who can receive information and calls to action. They can spread reliable information about what is going on in Washington, and generally counteract the continuing flood of distortions and outright falsehoods in the media. They can serve as gatekeepers, screening out bad information generated from both the right and the left. They can, of course, organize future demonstrations, which, with more time to put them together, should be even bigger than the ones yesterday.

But most of all, I hope they can get everyone who attended or wanted to attend to vote. That is our true power, and too many of us stayed home November 9. The ability to organize an event like the one yesterday can be translated into efforts to counteract voter suppression by helping those who need it to get their IDs in order, and arranging transportation to the polls. Where there are fees to obtain IDs, fundraising can be done. Time is a key here, because the 2017 elections are important. We will be choosing the first wave of officials who will determine what the 2020 redistricting looks like, so this is how we counter gerrymandering. Put another way, this is how we go about seating a more progressive House of Representatives to work with our next president. These off year elections also give us the best chance to seat progressives in local positions. We can build a farm team of people with experience governing for the bigger races in the future, but we have to start small and build up. This is something the Tea Party realized and began working on many years ago, but the Green Party never did. The Tea Party also understood that their best path to power was within the Republican Party. If they had tried to build a third party instead, they would have split the right wing vote as they became more powerful, giving up important races to the Democrats. We saw our power yesterday. It is enough to reform the Democratic Party and begin notching some victories. But we must go from showing and sharing our strength to putting it to use.

I want to share this in closing. It is not the slickest or most polished music video, but it seems to me to be the most appropriate: