Over 5 million people, in approximately 673 Sister Marches spanning across the seven continents, united together under for one main event, the Women’s March. The Women’s March on Washington, along with the various Sister Marches took place Saturday, January 21st, 2017. The event was full of daughters and mothers, fathers and sons, the young and the young at heart, who were all brought together to raise their voices and to protest the negative rhetoric produced in Trump’s election campaign.
The result is the “largest day of peaceful demonstrations in American history”, as members from different socio-economic backgrounds joined together in solidarity. As evidenced by the popular #whyimarch campaign on social media, the reasons for joining the march varied widely, but as one of the approximate 60,000 marchers in Toronto stated, showing solidarity is essential “not just for women but for all the different groups that Trump is attempting to marginalize. This isn’t just about women at all. That’s really an excuse, a headline, but we all need to stick together.”
And you needn’t look far to see the truth in that. Just taking a glance through the list of attendees, prominent speakers and organizations who helped run, promote or fund the march, is enough to understand why this movement is so inclusive. The Women’s March is based on eight “Unity Principles”, ranging from worker’s rights to environmental justice, which along with its guiding Kingian nonviolence principles, make it accessible to everybody and anybody.
Bob Bland, the co-founder and co-chair of the Women’s March on Washington stated that, “Together, we demonstrated the capacity of women working together in unity to create transformational change.” And the diversity of the topics represented in the signs held by protesters, and the age range of the marchers from around the world, paints an important picture of the future of feminism. This wave of intersectional feminism does not feature merely the passing of the social justice torch from the old generation to the next, but the bearing of the weight equally between the two.
While there are some who argue that the walk, especially the Sister Marches, will not generate any profound change in the United States, or have any long-lasting effects, there are many who beg to differ. As one Torontonian put it, even the notion of being ” […] reminded that there are this many people on the right side of history, ” helps bring peace of mind after the emotional turbulence of President Trump’s election.
And the Women’s March does not want the momentum to end either. They have launched “10 Actions for the First 100 Days“, an action plan to keep the dialogue flowing and stir communities and grassroots initiatives to continue advocating and working towards change. The plan features easy to accomplish tasks, integrating social media with social justice, to generate real world results which “will transform this diverse, organic movement into a powerful force for equality and justice, with practical goals“.
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