Once again, women ready to take to streets
It snowed a year ago, the night before thousands of women and an encouraging number of men descended upon the state capitol in Santa Fe with posters and pink hats and the promise that something better was still possible if we came together and spoke up. And marched. Already, that frosty morning we had heard news accounts that the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., and in 673 sister marches around the world was attracting some 5 million people, exceeding all expectations and becoming the largest day of protest in U.S. history.
In Albuquerque, about 1,700 marchers had pledged to show up that Jan. 21, and while estimates varied widely it was safe to calculate that the number who packed Civic Plaza was at least nearly twice that many.
In Santa Fe, where snow had given way to clear skies and sun by march time, we were about 11,000 strong — nearly four times as many marchers than had been predicted.
The march had been like the sun breaking through a very dark time — enlightening, warming, energizing. If you were at one of these marches, I hope you can remember how it felt to be surrounded by folks inspired like never before, there for a peaceful, purposeful protest devoid of violence or hate. It was, as they say, a moment. And let me take a moment to say that last year several of you readers commented that the marches were hate-filled because in D.C. a few celebrity speakers spoke about “nasty women” and “blowing up” the White House and a certain new occupant of the White House. But there’s a difference between hate and outrage, and it’s folly to judge an event that went off without a single act of violence or vandalism on a few sound bites.
One reader also offered this prediction: “The march will be quickly forgotten and a footnote in history for 2017.” Well, not quite. Once the posters and the pink hats were put away, the activism awakened by the Women’s March persisted, manifesting itself in a variety of ways, from the Indivisible movement that promotes social and economic justice to the surge in the number of women across the country running for — and winning — political office to the reckoning that is the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements in which women are taking back their bodies and their power from the men who for too long believed they were entitled to both.
So here it is, another year. Little snow has fallen this winter, but to many the country is still dark and polarized and imperiled, if not more so.
So once again, women — and, one hopes, an encouraging number of men — prepare to take to the streets and plazas Sunday for a second Women’s March.
“I never thought of this as a onetime thing,” said Samia Assed, a very active Albuquerque activist and lead organizer for Women’s March New Mexico with the assistance of Peaches Blackbird of Power Through Peace and Beva Sanchez-Padilla of the SouthWest Organizing Project. “The mission is to empower women and build a broad-based coalition that promotes and supports women’s rights and what we are fighting for. We know that we have to be the change we want to see. We have no choice but to activate now.”
Last year’s march was reactionary, Assed said. This year’s march is proactive, centered on the theme of Power to the Polls, an effort to register voters, engage marginalized communities by getting them to the voting booths to support candidates, especially women, and progressive policies that align with the movement’s unity principles on ending violence and supporting reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, workers’ rights, civil rights, disability rights, immigrant rights and environmental justice.
“This year is about being busy, about taking action and not just getting mad,” said Rayellen Smith, president of Indivisible Nob Hill, one of the many groups helping to organize the Albuquerque march. “It’s about every single person down to little bitty child having the same rights without limitations.”
This year’s flagship march is in Las Vegas, Nev., and will help launch a yearlong voter registration tour. Like before, Albuquerque’s march is at Civic Plaza with guest speakers and booths and plenty of chanting and cheering, posters and, yes, perhaps a few pink hats.
Both women say that while this year’s march may not draw the same numbers, the energy unleashed last year remains just as strong.
“Americans are waking up,” Assed said. “There’s an awareness in the community about the situation around them and what is happening. What encourages me is the number of women — and men, actually — who have never participated in organizing a movement coming in and saying, we want to help, we want to do something.” And so they will do something Sunday. I’m hoping for clear skies.