“For every action, there is a reaction,” is not just a law of physics. After running (and winning) an openly misogynistic campaign marred with revelation after revelation of sexual assault and other improprieties against women, women are striking back on January 21, the day after president-elect Trump’s inauguration.
“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,” reads the Mission and Vision statement of the Women’s March on Washington.
It continues: “[We] 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,” an allusion to Hillary Clinton’s iconic speech at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.
Over 200,000 have indicated on Facebook, that they will attend and the amount of bus permits allocated for the 21st have exceeded those allocated for the day of the inauguration.
Among those in attendance will be many of the approximately 60 members of Congress who are boycotting Donald Trump’s inauguration, including Luis Gutiérrez, D-IL and Raul Grijalva, D-NM.
A march on Washington would be significant enough, but the 600 “sister marches” across the world planned for the same day promise to bring the numbers in the streets into the millions. The Women’s March on Chicago has over 20,000 RSVPs and the Los Angeles area has a total of five different marches from Pasadena to Redondo Beach.
When you take into account the international marches and the scope of the marches’ aims, it becomes clear that this is an uprising, led by women, against the good ‘ol boys network of global capitalism.
Take their document outlining their Unity Principles. Among them are calls to end police brutality, to protect reproductive rights, to protect and expand LGBTQIA rights, to protect and to expand workers rights.
It is a document that not only signals resistance to Donald Trump and his sexist agenda, but also indicts the system that created him, a system that disproportionately disadvantages women.
It’s that scope of concern that has attracted hundreds of diverse national partners (and thousands of local partners) including the AFL-CIO, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, NAACP and Catholics for Choice.
The honorary co-chairs are a whose-who of the contemporary American radicals: labor leader Dolores Huerta, Angela Davis, former nominee for vice president of the United States on the Communist Party USA’s ticket, author Gloria Steinem, civil rights icon Harry Belafonte, and Native American movement activist Ladonna Harris.
The website for the Women’s March provides a comprehensive “frequently asked questions” section outlining transportation and logistics for the day-of. The rally will begin at 10 a.m. at the intersection of Independence Avenue and Third Street in Washington D.C. and the march begins at 1:15 p.m.
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