Women’s March continues to make waves
Anti-Trump activists hope to concentrate energy in one direction
There are signs that the Women’s March on Washington was the start of a growing grass-roots resistance to President Trump’s agenda.
The night after the biggest national demonstration in U.S. history, a coalition of activists led by MoveOn.org held an “emergency” conference call to discuss next steps — it drew about 60,000 participants.
Almost 4,000 people RSVP’d on Facebook to a rally Thursday outside a Republican lawmaker retreat at the Loews Philadelphia Hotel where Trump spoke. Two days earlier, hundreds protested outside the offices of Republican senators in swing states, including 500 at Sen. Pat Toomey’s Philadelphia office and 270 at Sen. Cory Gardner’s Denver office. At least 4,700 plan to march April 15, tax day, in Chicago to call on Trump to release his tax returns.
Activist phone banks call lawmakers’ offices, and the White House is flooded with petitions regarding issues from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe to climate change to the Affordable Care Act.
A number of new feminist magazines profiling female bands, artists and writers are in the works, including Girls Get
Busy Zine and Hooligan Mag. The online platform Omaze has a new campaign featuring Samantha Bee to sell Nasty Woman T-shirts and hoodies to benefit Planned Parenthood that’s raised $631,182 from donors from 95 different countries.
One of the biggest questions around Saturday’s Women’s March on Washington that drew half a million demonstrators and 2.6 million worldwide is whether its varied platform can yield a co- hesive plan to resist Trump’s policies. An initial priority is preserving the ACA, which Congress is moving to repeal.
“It’s very easy to get downtrodden and feel negative when things that you need are being taken away,” said Kelly Vincent, 42, a writer whose husband’s lack of insurance because of a pre-existing condition nearly bankrupted the family. “I’m not going anywhere,” said Vincent, who recently returned from the D.C. march.
This groundswell of interest in civic activism has the potential to mature into the biggest movement in U.S. history, said Kari Winter, a professor of American history at the State University of New York in Buffalo.
She sees greater parallels with the American Revolution and anti-slavery movements than with the modern Republican Tea Party, because of the hundreds of rallies that took place outside the USA, indicating that “people all over the world recognize that their own future is at stake in what happens here.”
“I don’t think we’ve seen something quite at this scale,” Winter said. “When you have mass protests, ultimately what wins in history is what wins hearts and minds,” she said.
The challenge domestically is creating a central command structure. The Democratic National Committee is reeling after internal divisions were laid bare by the release of WikiLeaks emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Many of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ supporters say the DNC was too proactive in backing Clinton. The top candidates to lead the committee are more liberal, including Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, and they hope to harness this activist energy in office.
“I want the Democratic Party to be the vehicle for organizers who are ready to take back our country,” Ellison said in a statement to USA TODAY. The DNC election will be in late February.
In his first week in office, Trump has issued executive actions on building a wall on the Mexico border and reviving the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. Activist groups announced major actions in response. Environmentalists plan a People’s Climate March on April 29 in Washington and around the country.
Organizers of the Women’s March on Washington called for “planned actions” every 10 days over the next 100 days. Protesters have been outside the White House since the election, including a group that held up rush hour traffic Wednesday night.
The protests that started in Washington are leading to specific action, said Salewa Ogunmefun, political director for One Pennsylvania.
During protests, organizers hold training sessions and phone banks and enroll Americans, many of whom have not been involved in public activism other than voting every four years.
“Democrats have many tools in their toolbox,” said Victoria Kaplan, organizing director for MoveOn.org, which held numerous protests around the Iraq War.
“This is of a much greater scale. There’s an urgent tenor,” said Kaplan, who led the conference call Tuesday with 60,000 Americans who either dialed in or live streamed the session. The following day, the number of events outside the offices of senators and House members doubled to 200, Kaplan said. “That’s only going to continue,” she said.
“I don’t think we’ve seen something quite at this scale. When you have mass protests, ultimately what wins in history is what wins hearts and minds.” Kari Winter, State University of New York in Buffalo