Women’s March 2019: Still Marching
For two excruciating years, we’ve tolerated an orange-tinted, unhinged, sexual predator in the White House. We watched an angry, entitled judge throw a national temper tantrum over legitimate accusations of sexual assault yet still confirmed to the Supreme Court. Hundreds of thousands of families are being torn apart through devastating and inhumane treatment at our borders. And now the government is experiencing its longest shutdown in history. Meanwhile, we know now that Roe v. Wade is truly at stake. Our basic freedom IS in the crosshairs. We’ve never been angrier or more outraged. We marched when this all started. And we will not stop marching now.
As a member of the new Women’s March Steering Committee and the original Policy Committee who helped unfold the inclusive, intersectional Unity Principles, I am so proud of the collective work we have done to create a diverse, inclusive and radical agenda that challenges systems of power; demands reproductive freedom; racial, gender and economic justice; and puts workers rights, immigrants rights, and LGBTQIA rights first. Was our work perfect? Absolutely not. Did we make mistakes? Indeed we did. But we are still marching.
The Women’s March is not, and never has been, about individuals. The Women’s March is the collective action of millions who have been taking over the streets, locked arms and raised their voices since the morning after Election Day 2016. The Women’s March is 673 marches that took place across the globe. The Women’s March is not just four co-chairs; the Women’s March is all of us — the people who marched; the women and LGBTQIA people who ran for office; the first-time and infrequent voters who will now never stop voting; the people who became civically engaged and radically active for the first time.
The controversy around the Women’s March in recent months is reflective of the challenging complexities and unhealed wounds we still carry as a country. There are those who will choose not to march this year, and thankfully in this country, everyone still has a right to make that decision. As our #VOTEPROCHOICE tagline declares: we are a prochoice nation. As the co-founder and CEO of #VOTEPROCHOICE, we have a foundational commitment to partnership based on the shared value of reproductive freedom, a fundamental Unity Principle. Therefore, I will be marching in community for this value.
However, whether you march on Saturday or whether you choose not to, we are all still the Women’s March. Certainly, every single person who marched in some form over the last two years will continue to work toward gender, racial and economic equity in whatever way is authentic to you. Because one thing is for sure, the genie of justice is out of the bottle, and it’s never going back in.
I am personally grateful to the women leading Women’s March Inc. for relentlessly keeping the momentum of protest going for years. They made visual the new face of leadership in America and keep conversations of gender equity and racial justice in the headlines. But more than anything they have forced us to have tough conversations about topics like race, whiteness, intersectionality, and anti-semitism. These are important conversations that we need to explore collectively and we are doing that in transformative ways.
Make no mistake — we are all the Women’s March. We will never stop voting or activating our communities. We will never stop telling our stories. We all know what’s at stake if we let our voices be silenced. We will never stop marching.
