Last night I dreamed that I was in a huge crowd of people, all pushing and moving. The building was on fire, but I was the only one who had noticed. I started to yell for help, but I had no voice. The more I screamed, the higher the flames rose.
That’s the feeling that I was trying to address when I marched with about one million like minded friends in Washington day one of the Trump administration.
I drove from Massachusetts to D.C. with a friend that I’ve known for 45 years. We’re both grandmothers. We met up with another of our old friends and her husband.
Our group consisted of five Baby Boomers, eight Millennials and one transgender teen. We had both men and women with us. We cheered, we chanted, we got ourselves exhausted from standing in one place for hours. We held our signs, we talked to other people around us.
So why did we march?
I marched because for the past year I have felt just like I did in that dream. I have felt voiceless. Trying to get the truth out in the face of constant lies is demoralizing and infuriating. I marched because a million people really can outshout one liar.
My sons and their friends marched in solidarity. They marched because they’ve heard about the 1950’s- the illegal abortions, the lingering Jim Crow practices- and they don’t particularly want to go back there.
My young trans friend marched because she is sincerely afraid for her life, for her future. She doesn’t know if she’ll be allowed to complete her transition. She doesn’t know if she’ll be able to live her life the way she wants to live it.
People asked us if we were marching FOR something. People want to know if we were marching AGAINST Trump.
I think that we were marching for and against. It felt incredibly empowering to roar along with the other 500,000 or so people who stood around us. It felt liberating to chant in unison that “Hey, Ho, Hey, Ho, Donald Trump has got to go!”
We called Trump names; that doesn’t accomplish anything and I think we know that. But we were also marching because he has bragged about assaulting women just like us.
We marched because we are getting damn sick and tired of listening to a man who sees us only as sexual objects or ignores us completely. We marched because these are OUR bodies and we want control of them.
We also marched for our children and our grandchildren. We marched because we believe that everyone has a right to affordable health insurance and a decent public education.
We marched for this beautiful little child, who lives in fear that her parents will be deported. At six years old, this young activist had the courage to stand up to Donald Trump and to speak in front of 500,000 people. In two languages. She made me determined to stand up just as bravely.
When I asked everyone around me, in my group and beyond it, what one word they would use to describe the day, the vast majority said, either “empowered” or “hopeful.”
One young mother said she felt “validated” to see so many people on the streets. She said that she had been starting to feel like she was the one who was wrong.
Like women and men who have been “gaslighted,”many of us have started to question our own perceptions. When those in government look us in the eye and blatantly lie to us, when the President denies saying what we have all heard him say, we begin to doubt ourselves.
The Women’s March showed us that we aren’t alone, that we’re in the majority and that we’re right.
The video below explains a bit more.
All images by Karen Shiebler
