Democracy & Government
A Great and Joyful March, But It’s Not Enough
Saturday's protests were inspiring but just the first step in fighting back against those who would end democracy.
Thousands of people take
part in the Women's March on Jan. 21, 2017 in New York City. The
midtown Manhattan event was one of many anti-Trump protests nationwide
that came a day after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of
the United States. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
“Peaceful
protests are a hallmark of our democracy. Even if I don’t always agree,
I recognize the rights of people to express their views.”
On Sunday morning,
that came flying out from the Twitter account of @realDonaldTrump, raising the question, “What have you done with the real, @realDonaldTrump?”
It sure didn’t sound like the troll we’ve come to know. A couple of
days in, maybe the awesomeness of becoming the leader of the free world
had penetrated his roiling psyche and settled him down.
Nah. Clearly, he hadn’t written it. Because just two hours before, in
a tone far more like the narcissistic whinge we’re used to,
the Trump account tweeted,
“Watched protests yesterday but was under the impression that we just
had an election! Why didn’t these people vote? Celebs hurt cause badly.”
Not voting? Celebs? That sound you heard was my cognitive dissonance alarm hitting DEFCON 1.
In both instances, the bad and not-quite-as-bad Trump personas were
writing about Saturday’s worldwide protests, women’s marches in more
than 500 cities in the United States — at least 3.7 million Americans —
and more than another hundred demonstrations internationally, from
London and
Paris to that handful of hearty souls who displayed their protest signs in
Antarctica.
There were half a million people in
Washington, DC, just the day after the
less-than-superb turnout for Donald Trump’s inauguration and some 400,000 here in
New York City, if not more.
According to Sarah Frostenson at Vox, “… Political scientists say they think we may have witnessed the largest day of demonstrations in American history.”
I have been at many, many protest marches in my life, going back to
the big anti-Vietnam demonstrations of the late ’60s and ’70s, and I
have never experienced anything like what happened this weekend. We
arrived at our designated stepping off point on Saturday at 11:30 a.m.,
right on time, but the block was so packed it already had been penned
off. A marshal suggested we move up to the next street above and work
our way back down to where we were supposed to be but it was impossible
and in the process I managed to get separated from my friends — too much
of a crowd between us to get back to one another; a situation
complicated by a dying cellphone.
 |
A scene from the crowd in the march in New York on Saturday,
Jan. 21, 2017. (Photo by Michael Winship) |
And so there I stood, alone in the crowd, waiting for something to
happen, soaking in the excitement and anticipation everyone shared at
being there, enjoying the collegiality, reading the hundreds of signs,
from the woman carrying a 5×7 card with the words, “A tiny sign for a
tiny man” to the guy not far from me whose placard read, “A woman made
this sign for me.”
Apparently, our numbers were so unexpected it took a while for the
organizers and police to figure out what to do with us all, so it was
2:30 p.m. or so before we finally began to move, slowly swinging south
onto Second Avenue on the east side of Manhattan. This wasn’t so much a
march as a slow group shuffle; there were so many people crowded onto
the street we could only move a little bit at a time,
like an escaped chain gang bound at the ankles.
We worked our way down to 42
nd Street and then west. I was
tempted to peel off at Grand Central Station and head home — the hour
already was late — but I was determined to make it all the way to the
end, to reach Fifth Avenue and 56
th Street and summit at Trump Tower.
By the time we made our way onto Fifth Avenue the sun was going down
but we kept moving, singing, chanting, cheering. A 6-year-old girl,
perched on a grown-up’s shoulders, urged us on: “We are the popular
vote! This is what democracy looks like!” she shouted and we echoed
everything she said. This was her personal favorite: “Donald Duck for
president!”
Saturday was a stunning affirmation of
defiance, a rebuke and warning that resistance has just begun, yet only
if we have the patience and grit to keep it moving forward.
We got to a block from Trump’s gilded pleasure dome and then were
turned away by parade marshals
and police. We could get no closer;
barriers blockaded the way. Amicably, the protesters broke up, walking
east and west on the cross streets, many filling the bars and
restaurants, others crowding into the subway stations, headed home.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer tried to shrug off the significance of what happened on our streets Saturday.
Referring to the Washington march, he said, “There were people who came to the Mall, as they do all the time, sometimes in smaller numbers.” Ho-hum, he seemed to say.
“A lot of these people were there to protest an issue of concern to
them and not against anything,” Spicer said, personifying the
self-deception that believes the lie.
Sorry, Sean — Saturday was a stunning affirmation of defiance, a
rebuke and warning that resistance has just begun, yet only if we have
the patience and grit to keep it moving forward.
I’ve told this story here before, but the lesson remains: In the wake
of the murder of protesting students at Kent State and Jackson State in
1970, the big antiwar demonstrations that followed and the nationwide
student strike that shut down hundreds of colleges and universities, the
idea was not just to demonstrate but to mobilize and continue to work
toward an end to the Vietnam War. Once the dramatic marches had come to
an end, all too many simply took advantage of an early end to the
semester and headed for the beach. Little was accomplished and the war
continued for another five years. Those of us who wanted to keep the
peace work going — the stated intention of the strike — were met with
diffidence at best and at worst, outright apathy and resentment.
“Thank you for understanding that sometimes we must put our bodies where our beliefs are,”
Gloria Steinem said
at Saturday’s rally in Washington. “Pressing ‘send’ is not enough.”
She’s right, but marching won’t be enough either as we go up against a
committed band of zealots determined to end all remaining vestiges of
the New Deal and the Great Society and to further enrich the wealth of
the 1 percent — especially, of course, themselves.
“This is the upside of the downside,”
Steinem said on Saturday. “This
is an outpouring of energy, and true democracy like I have never seen
in my very long life. It is wide in age, it is deep in diversity, and
remember, the Constitution does not begin with ‘I the president,’ it
begins with ‘we the people.’”
The work must take place at every level, from local on up:
organizing, keeping yourself informed,
sending letters and emails,
making phone calls, attending town meetings, running for office or
working for the candidates who best represent your interests.
And this, perhaps above all: confront your member of Congress. Don’t
let him or her off the hook. Make sure your representative doesn’t sell
you out to the Big Interests, or deceive you with empty rhetoric. If
they do – throw the rascals out.
There is no time to lose. With each day, a cornice of our republic
crumbles and the body of democracy struggles to keep itself from
stumbling and falling into the abyss. No joke.
