There is something very cool happening across the globe this week and we can be part of it in spirit, if not in body.
Thousands of people are preparing to join the Women’s March on Washington Jan. 21, one day after the presidential inauguration.
This is one of those grassroots campaigns that makes the spine tingle and induces goose bumps. According to organizers, the Women’s March on Washington began as an “organically growing groundswell” the day after the US election when a woman in Hawaii proposed to 40 of her friends to go march in Washington D.C. “Her friends invited their friends, and by the time the idea hit the Facebook group called Pantsuit Nation, there were a number of women administering pages of their own generating thousands of sign-ups by the hour. The ideas converged and people joined forces. Many people wanted to be a part of a public demonstration that the new president does not represent them.”
Their mission: “In the spirit of democracy and honouring the champions of human rights, dignity, and justice who have come before us, we join in diversity to show our presence in numbers too great to ignore. The Women’s March on Washington will send a bold message to our new government on their first day in office, and to the world that women’s rights are human rights. We stand together, recognizing that defending the most marginalized among us is defending all of us.”
Thousands of people, not only women, are expected to march on Washington D.C. Saturday and more than one million people say they will participate in more than 600 registered sister marches in the United States and around the world.
Sister marches are solidarity events inspired by the march, and organized by volunteers around the world. The closest one to us is at Queen’s Park in Toronto at noon. Those who can’t attend any march are welcome to show support within the online communities of their choice or in their own neighbourhoods, by posting signs or spreading the word.
The protest takes its name from the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the historic “I Have a Dream” speech. The event set a precedent of demonstrating in Washington D.C., to demand civil and economic rights for African Americans, for peace in Vietnam and rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
“The work of this march is not only to stand together in sisterhood and solidarity for the protection of our rights, our safety, our families and our environment – but it is also to build relationships and mend the divides between our communities. It’s hard work, and it will be ongoing. It’s an ambitious goal – one that reaches far beyond Jan. 21 – but we believe that there is no other way forward. Only together can we march towards freedom,” said the march’s organizers in a statement.
Follow the day’s activities by searching #whyimarch and #womensmarch.