Photo from private collection of Marilyn Salenger
The day after President Donald Trump's Inauguration, an estimated 200,000 women and supportive men are expected to gather in our nation's Capital for the Women's March on Washington. Their numbers continue to grow as sister marches are being organized in cities across the country and around the world. Mothers, daughters and grandmothers will be marching together, generation to generation, in a solidarity of concern for our futures as women.
We have taken to the streets of our country to protest for equal rights since the early part of the 20th Century. Marches became an integral and critical part of success because they drew attention, and still do. The women pictured above were marching in a Labor Parade as part of the Women's Trade Union League in 1911. They were marching down New York City's Fifth Avenue protesting for higher pay, shorter hours, fire safety, sanitary working conditions and child labor laws.
Two years later in 1913, thousands of women suffragettes boldly and bravely marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. the day before President Woodrow Wilson's first Inauguration. They were attempting to be heard and seen in front of their biggest audience yet. The women walked "in a spirit of protest against the present political organization of society from which women are excluded." Their march had been years in the making, working to encourage women to fight for a right denied them since our founding days. Their historic battle resulted in the 19th Amendment to our Constitution officially granting women the right to vote in 1920.
100 years after those first marches, inequality and sexism remain a part of women's lives. There is nothing right about it. This past election raised its awareness once again and brought us to the first steps of next generation activism.
A divisive presidential campaign provided a basis for the sweeping show of support the Women's March is attracting. The frustration level felt among many women reflects how we were dealt with during the campaign, and how our lives will potentially be affected during a Trump presidency. The march will provide a place to purposefully vent.
What began with a Facebook post the day after the 2016 election now has the potential to become another landmark event for women. Like those marches that came before, this one is seizing the moment.
The Women's March formal mission statement includes the following:
“In the spirit of democracy and honoring 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.”
Organizers of the march said that their event is not about Trump but rather the inequities his actions represent. But it is about Trump. Women are marching because they instinctively know they have to march. Too many feel their voices went unheard in this past election, and too much of what we care about is at a critical state of disregard.