I was honored to have been a part of the Women’s March this past Saturday, because not only was I able to march among like-minded women who refused to vote for our racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, etc. into infinity president, but I was also given a lot to think about during the march.
First, there were so many people at the march that we had to quickly reorganize and create a new path to account for the 500,000+ people that were in Washington D.C. alone. But to be honest, this process happened pretty quickly, and fairly painlessly. The police worked with us, asking only that we clear a path for a couple of ambulances that had to cut through the streets we were now marching down. Shouldn’t this have been a little harder for us to accomplish? To be honest, at the time we had no idea what the hell was going on, so we marched forward blindly, following the person in the pussy hat in front of us.
Second, pussy hats are kind of transphobic. Like, I’m totally here with you guys wanting to protect birth control and abortion rights, but vagina does NOT equal woman. Womens rights should not be conflated with vagina rights, because they’re not exclusive.
Photograph by Kira Goodwin
Third, people were doing a lot of pretty dangerous stuff at the march. By this, I mean: climbing on top of scaffolding, climbing on top of police buildings, climbing on top of traffic lights, etc. And I admit that I also climbed some scaffolding so I could catch a glimpse of crowd. But I’m pretty sure this stuff was only okay because it was a bunch of young white kids doing it. Something tells me POC would have been arrested for destruction of property or disturbing the peace or something.
All this said, the march was a wonderful gathering of women to protest the rampant sexism shown by our president in just the past 5 days. If you’re thinking, Great, I walked the march and now I’m done, then you entirely missed the point of the march. Scroll down to see five easy ways to keep contributing to the mission of the march.
1. Start a postcard writing campaign to your local senators
This one comes straight from the Women’s March organization. They recommend beginning a letter writing (or postcard writing) campaign within your local communities to argue for the issues you’re most passionate about. This is not limited to women’s issues! Write about anything from the EPA to the NEA to the shutdown of information from our national parks services and our government scientists. Get writing! For more information, go to womensmarch.com/100.
2. Donate to Planned Parenthood
Did you know that 2.5 women/people with vaginas will lose access to necessary healthcare if Planned Parenthood gets fully defunded? Yeah. Do something about that. Go donate.
3. Read up on some amazing black activists
Angela Davis. Audre Lorde. Harriet Tubman. Colin Kaepernick. And so, so many more. Seriously, just go to Google and start your research.
4. Donate everything you don’t need to help the poor and underprivileged in our nation.
You have clothes that you don’t wear. You have old boots that don’t fit. You have one too many coats. You have extra pads and tampons and cans of food. And if you don’t have all of these things? Something tells me that you can go buy them. Something tells me that plenty of Her Campus readers (and writers) have more than enough money to give something, at the VERY least something they decide they “don’t need”. And if you have more to give, plenty of soup kitchens and halfway homes need volunteers. When you make purchases at Goodwill, you can donate however many cents to the next dollar to help them train underprivileged people to find jobs, everything from helping them find outfits to refining their resumes. That’s something we can all get behind, right?
5. Keep talking
Keep posting to Facebook. Keep making signs. Keep protesting. Keep