Women’s March ‘entry point’ for activist wave
Washington event planned for day after Trump inauguration
There’s grief over Hillary Clinton’s election loss among the 200,000 women planning to march on Washington the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration Jan. 20, but those organizing the Women’s March on Washington said the event is about far more than that.
For the women coming as far away as California and Hawaii, there’s concern that their rights could be rolled back by Congress and the new Republican White House. These include some of the causes women fought for dating to the suffragette convention in 1848 in Seneca Falls, N.Y. — such as affordable health care.
The women planning to gather in Washington on Jan. 21 are responding to a Facebook event page created by retired attorney Teresa Shook of Hawaii on election night. They’re coming on their own, mainly on chartered buses from large cities and smaller locales or are driving or flying themselves.
They haven’t been corralled by an outside interest group. Various women’s groups, such as those supporting birth control and abortion rights, are coming to them.
For many women, it’s the first time they’ve been involved in civic activism — among the dozens of independent coordinators at the state level are yoga teachers and fashion designers. That spontaneous outburst of activism has posed some of the event’s early problems as it has struggled to find a cohesive theme and organization.
“This is not only historical for us and our generation,” said Carmen Perez, who will turn 40 on the day of the march, “but also the fact that this is the first mass mobilization after a president steps into office.”
The march will begin in front of the Capitol building, and it’s among about 100 taking place across the country and internationally, including in London. HOW MUCH OF AN IMPACT? The diversity of concerns driving participants to the nation’s capital makes it unclear how much impact they’ll have on the agenda of the incoming administration. Organizers hope the significance of the march, bringing together more than 100 different interest groups including the Sierra Club, NAACP and MoveOn.org, will be a web of activism spun in its aftermath. Organizers see the event as the start of a wave of activism on the left, much like the conservative Tea Party formed as a grass-roots movement.
“We see this as the first convening,” said Janaye Ingram, the head of logistics. “New alliances will be forged through this effort.”
They enlisted star power and support from a previous generation of activists: labor leader and civil rights activist Dolores Huerta joins feminist icon Gloria Steinem and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte as honorary co-chairs.
Some of the organizers, such as Perez and Tamika Mallory, worked with Belafonte’s nonprofit Gathering for Justice.
“The rhetoric of the past year alarmed people, it galvanized people,” said Cassady Fendlay, communication director for the march. “But we also recognize these issues didn’t just happen in the past year.” She cast the march not as a Trump protest but an attempt “to speak to all levels of government.”
The march started with Shook and has blossomed into a diverse coalition of women — and some men — coming together to highlight their concern over a broader array of issues, including criminal justice and climate change. Perez called the event an “entry point” for many women to get involved in their communities. “We hope it will ignite a spark in them to go back to their communities and do something,” she said. ‘WE’RE WATCHING’ Many of the issues the suffragettes talked about in Seneca Falls in 1848, including equal pay mandates and affordable child care, remain unfinished business.
“We’ve been trying to move forward, but at this point, women have to fight just to maintain what they have,” said University of Scranton political historian Jean Harris. “Having this march right now is important to say we’re not going to take this. We’re watching.”
Some of the marchers acknowledged that there isn’t a cohesive message, and some booked their flights and hotels in a state of shock after Clinton’s loss. “All of this disappointment rolls into one giant ‘I’m going to fly to D.C.’ ” said Elizabeth Nash, state issue manager at the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research group.
Since then, concerns among women’s rights activists have crystallized, said Nash, who points to state-level trends working their way to Washington. Though Trump’s daughter Ivanka pushed for paid maternity leave during the campaign, it is not emerging as a top priority of the new White House, and the list of women’s concerns is long.
The average number of abortion restrictions passed from 1980 through 2009 was 16 per year, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data provided by Guttmacher. From 2010 through 2016, the average was 61. These include ultrasound and fetal heartbeat mandates, and states such as Kansas and Indiana are among those that far outpace others.
“The threat is real,” said Nash, who will join the march.
“We’ve been trying to move forward, but at this point, women have to fight just to maintain what they have.” University of Scranton political historian Jean Harris