Movement marks anniversary by turning resistance into activism
Women’s March is back, but with a new priority: Running for office
WASHINGTON – The Women’s March will be back on the streets this weekend, but the movement that arose in resistance to President Trump is about more than marching.
It’s about registering voters and elec- toral power in November. For Linda Meigs of Huntsville, Ala., like many others inspired by last year’s march in Washington, it’s about running.
Instead of simply attending one of the many Women’s March anniversary events across the nation this weekend, Meigs will speak at her hometown event as a Democratic candidate for Alabama’s Statehouse.
“A year ago, I would have described
“A year ago, I would have described myself as a teacher, a wife and a mother. Now ... I add to that an activist and a leader. And it’s pretty darned exciting.” Linda Meigs Democratic candidate for Alabama’s Statehouse
myself as a teacher, a wife and a mother,” said Meigs, 63, a middle-school French teacher. “Now, because of the events of this past year, I add to that an activist and a leader. And it’s pretty darned exciting.”
The Women’s March drew millions of protesters at events nationwide on the first full day of Trump’s administration.
Since then, activists have swelled the ranks of grass-roots organizations, forming a national network of volunteers that Democrats hope will help them retake control of the House of Representatives in November. The Trump resistance movement helped Democrats pick up a Senate seat in Alabama’s special election last month.
This weekend, as hundreds of Women’s March anniversary events are held across the country, national organizers in Las Vegas will launch the next phase of their movement, Power to the Polls, a national voter registration and mobilization tour targeting swing states. They hope to register 1 million voters and help elect more women and liberals to office.
“It’s really a weekend for families and for women to come together and reflect on everything that we have accomplished in 2017 and then think about how we need to move beyond just resistance,” said Bob Bland, Women’s March co-president. “We have enormous collective power when we come together in numbers too large to ignore.”
Tens of thousands of women now want to run for office. Just one organization, Emily’s List, which helps elect pro-choice Democratic women, has heard from 26,000 women since Election Day 2016 who are interested in running. That compares with 920 women who reached out during the two-year 2016 election cycle.
“Donald Trump doesn’t know where to begin in empowering women, but he certainly has motivated them,” said Emily’s List spokeswoman Christina Reynolds, responding to Trump’s speech Tuesday at the White House’s Empowering Women Symposium.
It’s not just anti-Trump sentiments that are motivating women, according to the National Republican Congressional Campaign, the House GOP campaign arm. “In nearly every open, competitive seat, we have a female candidate who has decided they want to make their voice heard,” said spokesman Jesse Hunt. “It just shows you how committed female Republicans are to moving our country forward.”
Trump’s election certainly motivated Meigs. Until last year’s march, her only form of political participation was voting. She left the march so inspired that she joined every Democratic political group she could. She knocked on doors and trained volunteers to canvas for Doug Jones, the first Democrat Alabama elected to the Senate in 25 years. “All those efforts paid off,” she said. House Democrats, hoping to tap into the energy from the Women’s March, invested earlier than ever before in state parties to help hire full-time organizers who could partner at the local level with grass-roots groups. One group, called Swing Left, helps progressives in safe Democratic districts support candidates in the closest competitive district. Swing Left and allied groups have raised nearly $4 million to be delivered to the eventual Democratic nominees in swing districts.
“People really bought the idea of ‘Let’s work on the 2018 elections starting now,’ ” said Ethan Todras-White-hill, the group’s executive director.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House Democrats’ campaign arm, has an ambitious battlefield this year, with a target list of 91 open or GOP-held districts. They need a net gain of 24 seats to win control of the House.
After a year of activism, Meigs is counting on progressive grass-roots energy to pay off in her own race. She’s challenging a Republican who was first elected in 1989. She says he’s “a nice man,” but it’s time for “a new day in Alabama,” her campaign slogan.
“I just feel that there’s a blue wave coming, and it’s a wave of women — women who were energized by the Women’s March and by what’s going on in Washington in the White House.”