This past Saturday, all of the New York City Her Campus Chapters met up in Central Park for a Chapter Meet Up and picnic in the park. This was an amazing and fun opportunity for the different members of different schools in the city to meet each other and get to know about each other, their schools and chapters. Her Campus is an amazing organization that homes chapters all over the world. Based in writing and social media, it is also a safe space for women at many campuses to have community, meet new friends and empower women. We are grateful as a New York City chapter to share this city with 5 other active chapters. Working with each other, supporting one another and now meeting each other has been such a blessing and priority for us. There are so many chapters who will never be able to meet one another, and us all being within a train ride away is such a unique opportunity for us.Â
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I can truly attest, I enjoyed the time entirely. Something unique about the people who showed up was that none of us were from New York City. Being at St. John’s, I feel like a majority of the people I come across are either from the city, Long Island, New Jersey or Maryland (which is home for me). Seeing so many people from the same places all the time can be repetitive, so meeting people from all different places was refreshing and made me grateful because when else am I going to get the opportunity to meet such a diverse group of women like that, especially when we all have something in common- our love for writing and for our chapters.Â
After a fun picnic together, as some of us left, the rest of us noticed there was a lot of commotion and gathering going on around us. We saw (and all signed) a huge copy of the Constitution, and thousands of people all gathered around every entrance of Central Park. A protest was forming. You would think me, being a Government and Politics major, would know what protests were happening but I had no clue. It turns out the entire country was participating in a No Kings protest that was starting feet away from us at the park in New York City. So, we all said our goodbyes and separately joined the protest at different parts of it. We knew this protest was huge and we knew we wanted to get involved, but we had no clue just how big this protest truly was. Growing up close to Washington, D.C., I have seen my fair share of large protests but NOTHING close to the caliber the size of this one was. Both Broadway and 7th Avenue were completely filled from the bottom of Central Park until Times Square, where the final meeting point was. For those who don’t understand how far that is, it is nearly 20 blocks of people fully filled in. Following the conclusion of the protest, it was reported that over 100,000 people showed up to rally, becoming the largest protest recorded in history for New York City.
We didn’t know how huge or impactful this protest would become, but we knew we wanted to be a part of it and help support a cause that was important to us. This was the beauty of this day. People yearn for community, and not only did we build one by getting together and meeting one another, but also we joined another community together. And that is the empowerment that Her Campus and the women in it bring to this world, especially the women of the New York City chapters. I am so glad I was able to meet such great individuals in the city through this meet up and so glad to join something so powerful with them!