Tag: March

Categories
Health

Women's March 2018: The Most Powerful Images


No matter which side of the political aisle you sit, it’s hard to ignore the fact that on Saturday, January 20, 2018—exactly one year after Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States—women ruled the day. Millions of people mobilized in cities across the world, signs in hand, to march in protest of the president, yes, but also the myriad of other challenges we faced this year, including the sheer number of men abusing their power and sexually harassing women, the future of DACA, and the rollback of reproductive rights.

Of course, the beauty of a demonstration is just being there—your presence is more than enough—but it’s even better when you’re carrying a savage protest sign, and marchers in cities including D.C., New York, Chicago, Rome, Denver, Munich, and Park City came to play. From elaborate cartoons to bold messages, here are the most powerful signs and moments from the worldwide marches.



Source link

Categories
Health

A Year Later, the Women's March Is More Powerful—and Pertinent—Than Ever


Exactly 365 days after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States, citizens across the world are gathering, signs in hand, to march once again in protest. Since last year’s rallies—led by the historic Women’s March on Washington—it’s safe to say there’s a hell of a lot more to mobilize for in 2018, including the rise of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, the fate of DACA, and devastating comments made by the leader of the free world including the one about Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations being “shitholes.”

In New York, jewelry designer Nicole Novick tells Glamour that marching this year felt particularly pressing—which is why she and her husband brought their six-year-old twin sons. “I wanted my boys to see what people can do with their hearts and voices—what it looks like to be a force of change,” she says, adding that one of her sons made a sign—without her help!— that says “Be kind to every girl,” and the other chose “Word to your mother.” “As a woman and a [mom], it’s my duty to raise boys that grow up to be good men.”

Those in Park City, Utah, for the annual Sundance film festival, also took time out to march at a rally with speakers that included Jane Fonda. New York magazine events director Tara Reilly is there for work and says the strength-among- women energy is palpable. “A spark has definitely been lit and women are speaking up,” she says. “I’m inspired by strong voices in the entertainment industry, including legends like Jane, coming together to demand change.” She added that she was particularly inspired by something Fonda said: “When we are equal, we are not abused.”

I’m glad more people are getting an understanding of how deep and pervasive the white male patriarchy is in our society, government and culture

Robyn Duda, who just left a large publicly-traded company to start her own design firm, says she’s marching in Philadelphia for “all the women who get the job done well and continue to be paid less than their male counterparts,” adding that “diversity within large company executive teams continues to be embarrassing.”

Her sign, appropriately, reads “Take your 20 cents and invest it in manners.” “We all know women still make 80 cents to the dollar a man makes,” she says. “I can’t wait to see the day where the boardroom and employee pay structure is truly a reflection of a person’s work and not gender or age.”

Other marchers were as hopeful, certainly, but also outraged—and admit their feelings provided impetus to get out and protest.

“It’s been a really frustrating and saddening year,” said New York-based event planner and marcher Allyson Brassard, while non-profit animal shelter director, Brittany Feldman, says she’s ready to march for “the simple fact we have a racist running our country.” Minneapolis-based community outreach director Shaina Smith agrees. “I’m glad more people are getting an understanding of how deep and pervasive the white male patriarchy is in our society, government and culture,” she says “For those of us who were already aware, it’s been an exhausting year.”

There’s a second feminist revolution coming in this country and the world better get ready for it.”

Lydia Pitcher, a college professor in Albany, New York, has a message for the current administration: wake up and pay attention, particularly to people of color. “When you make things better for minority women, you make things better for everyone,” she says. “Folks who are able should consider investing in black-led organizing for political and economic change rather than continuing to fund mainstream efforts which can unintentionally undermine efforts to fight white supremacy and the patriarchy.” She cites Higher Heights, an organization committed to harnessing the power of black women from the voting booth to political leadership, as a good place to start.

In New York, editor Noah Silverstein echoed Pritcher’s idea of marginalized communities needing more recognition. “There hasn’t been any relief for anyone whose human rights are not guaranteed in the eyes of the administration: women, immigrants, the LGBTQIA community, and more,” he said. “As an out gay man, I feel it’s my responsibility to show up and be vocal.”

As far as the future is concerned, those on the ground remain optimistic in spite of the challenges that President Trump and his supporters are pretending don’t exist, but acknowledge that a strength-in-numbers mentality is key to propel change.

“Being part of the women’s march again makes me feel like I’m not alone in my anger and fear about what this administration is doing,” Melissa Berger, who works in philanthropy in New York, says. “I feel that women are the future like never before. We will lead on the issues of women’s rights, immigration rights, black lives matter, sexual assault and harassment. There’s a second feminist revolution coming in this country and the world better get ready for it.”

Abigail McCoy contributed to this report



Source link

Categories
Health

Donald Trump Trolls Women's March With a Predictably Selfish Tweet


A year after millions of women around the world marched against President Trump’s inauguration, the Women’s March is back with a vengeance for round two.

The slew of recent sexual abuse allegations and the rise of the #MeToo movement during Trump’s first year as president has inspired women and people everywhere to march for much needed social and political change for the second year in a row.

And amid all of this year’s inspiring action, Trump unsurprisingly took to his Twitter account to tweet his thoughts on the matter.

All things considered, his tweet started off on a strangely good note. “Beautiful weather all over our great country, a perfect day for all Women to March,” he wrote. Okay, that’s a fine first sentence. But then things get weird. Rather than totally grasping or mentioning the actual reasons why people are marching on the streets — his administration, for one — he implied that the march was in celebration of his first year in office. He then encouraged his followers to get out to celebrate the country’s great economy, which by the way, was inherited from President Obama’s administration.

He continued: “Get out there now to celebrate the historic milestones and unprecedented economic success and wealth creation that has taken place over the last 12 months. Lowest female unemployment in 18 years!”

Subsequently, and not surprisingly, tons of people caught on to Trump’s ridiculous trolling. Scroll down for some recent reactions:

Related Stories:





Source link

Categories
Health

Maxine Waters on How the Women's March Revived Her Faith in the Younger Generation


January 21 marks the one-year anniversary of the Women’s March, the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. All this week, Glamour will be spotlighting the stories, people, and issues that framed the March, as well as where we go from here.

Backstage, before I spoke at the Women’s March in Washington, my mind went immediately to the many marches I’ve been involved in during my lifetime. I couldn’t help but reflect on the work of fellow activists in my past, people like Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and so many others. I met up with Gloria backstage and my heart fluttered to see her, and we embraced and talked about old times.

But I will be honest: I was also feeling as if there had been a long gap. So much time had passed between when we had been together on those marches, what we had accomplished, and today. I had really begun to think that the women’s movement was lost, that younger women didn’t appreciate what we had done, and why. I thought they were more focused on their careers, thinking that a women’s movement didn’t enhance their opportunity for upward mobility, that they didn’t want to be aligned with it. They didn’t think they needed it.

Going in, I had been feeling disappointed, even a bit resentful,
toward the younger generation. But seeing the
size and passion of the crowd… [I realized] I’d
been completely wrong.

I lined up to speak, and I could not believe what I saw. I had heard there would be 250,000 people present; it was more like a million. It was unlike any march I’d been to before. For one thing, there were the pink hats everywhere. The signs were the most creative that I have ever seen. And the women who had organized the march had included people of all cultures and backgrounds in their leadership and planning.

Going in, I had been feeling disappointed, even a bit resentful, toward the younger generation. I was under the impression that they thought what we had done for women’s rights wasn’t important. But seeing the size and passion of the crowd and realizing that the younger women there recognized what we had done and that they were carrying our torch made me realize I’d been completely wrong. And as I left the stage and marched with groups of young women, I saw that they did know the history. Some of them even recognized me and called out my name, and it was thrilling to me to connect with the younger generation. We walked from the stage all the way to the White House and I was in a state of euphoria. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience.

Excerpted from Together We Rise: Behind the Scenes at the Protest Heard Around the World, available for purchase now.

More on The Women’s March:



Source link

Categories
Health

Roxane Gay: The Women's March Was Messy and Imperfect, But a Good Start


January 21 marks the one-year anniversary of the Women’s March, the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. All this week, Glamour will be spotlighting the stories, people, and issues that framed the March, as well as where we go from here.

I did not march in the Women’s March on January 21, 2017. I had a long-scheduled event I could not cancel so I actually spent most of the march on an airplane, following march-related events around the world on Twitter. Women, men, and children from all walks of life contributed to a remarkable show of force in the face of the American disgrace that was the election of Donald Trump as president. The sheer number of women participating in so many cities great and small overwhelmed and inspired me. I was unexpectedly moved, and for the first time since the election, I felt a little bit hopeful. The march was messy and imperfect, but it was a meaningful display of what might be possible if women, if people, could come together in a sustained and ongoing way.

I had a prior obligation, but I also had misgivings about the march. Like many black women and other women of color, I had complicated feelings about the march, how it began, and how this newfound solidarity was so long in coming. It took something as drastic as the election of a white supremacist to motivate women, en masse, to march in such a powerful demonstration of unity and repudiation. Somehow, the mass incarceration of black men, the state-sanctioned murders of black men and women by law enforcement, the pay gap between white women and women of color, the health care disparities between white women and women of color, and so many other issues were not drastic enough to inspire the kind of outrage seen in the months up to and during the Women’s March. That was and is disheartening.

Fifty-three percent of white women and a staggering 62 percent of white women without college degrees voted for Donald Trump; they were more interested in protecting whiteness than womanhood. Nearly a year after the fact, I remain stunned by these statistics. Perhaps, instead of marching, white women should have had frank conversations with each other about what a vote for Donald Trump truly meant for so many marginalized people—the working class, the LGBTQ community, people of color, immigrants, the Muslim community, people with disabilities, undocumented Americans—people whose lives suddenly became infinitely more precarious on November 9, 2016.

Like many black women and other women of color, I had complicated
feelings about the march, how it began, and how this newfound
solidarity was so long in coming.

My initial concerns about the Women’s March are largely the same issues that have always surrounded mainstream feminism. Any movement in support of women has to recognize that women have complex identities. Women are not affected equally by the ways of the world. As Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw put it, “Different things make different women vulnerable.” Intersectional feminism, a term coined by Crenshaw, accommodates this complexity, but not all feminism is intersectional. Certainly, as the march evolved into what it became, the agenda did reflect intersectional values, codified by the Unity Principles.

It was a good start.

The march also presented a significant challenge. What happens after that good start? In the coming months and years, we have to find the best ways to sustain the energy and enthusiasm generated by the Women’s March. It is relatively easy to show up for one day. How do we show up not just in historic moments but in our everyday lives, in our own homes and communities? How do we keep fighting when it feels hopeless to face an incompetent administration, a self-serving and inept congressional body, and a justice system that rarely demonstrates a concern for actual justice? How do we fight for ourselves while also fighting for the greater good? How do we hold ourselves accountable and force ourselves to make the difficult, inconvenient choices that will be demanded of us? How do we take up the fight when some of us are simply too weary to continue the fight alone?

I don’t have answers to these questions, but I know we need to find a way to be imperfect and messy but committed to making sure that what happened in November 2016 never happens again. The Women’s March was a good start, but it was only a start.

Excerpted from Together We Rise: Behind the Scenes at the Protest Heard Around the World, available for purchase now.

More on The Women’s March:



Source link

Categories
Health

The Oral History of the Frenetic Last Days Before the Women's March


January 21 marks the one-year anniversary of the Women’s March, the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. All this week, Glamour will be spotlighting the stories, people, and issues that framed the March, as well as where we go from here.

In the days before the march, the organizers worked from the infamous Watergate Hotel. The national team traveled to Washington to join Janaye Ingram and her team of organizers and volunteers, overseeing logistics and operations in the District of Columbia. As the activists dove into their last days of planning, they shared tense elevator rides with enthusiastic Trump inauguration attendees, dealt with online harassment, and faced critiques within their coalition.

JENNA ARNOLD [Women’s March Strategic Adviser and National Organizer]: I remember showing up at the Watergate Hotel the week before the march. I mean, the irony of us being based at the Watergate Hotel while planning the largest human rights protest in history has to be mentioned.

NANTASHA WILLIAMS [Deputy of Operations and National Organizer]: To my knowledge the Women’s March decided to stay at the Watergate because, simply put, they had the most available rooms to accommodate us and were willing to work with us on numerous things. The Women’s March was a very last-minute, rushed thing, so we were scrambling and had been in talks with many hotels to work out the best deal given all the complexities. Trump supporters were all over D.C. that weekend, so it would have been really hard to avoid them altogether.

TAMIKA MALLORY [Cochair and National Organizer]: That was a very, very intense week. We had received death threats. Linda, specifically, was under attack. So much hate coming at us from so many different directions. Being in the hotel with Trump supporters wasn’t easy.

JENNA: We didn’t want anyone knowing that we were at the Watergate. We didn’t know what the reaction would be. So yeah, so it was definitely confidential. But it was really hard because it was swarming with people with red hats.

ALYSSA KLEIN [Director of Social Media Strategy and National Organizer]: We got death threats on Twitter. They said they were happy for their Second Amendment rights because they were going to be able to use them on us and the people onstage.

CASSADY FENDLAY [Director of Communications and National Organizer]: Hate crimes had increased following the election. The visibility of the march brought a new level of intensity to the online harassment and death threats. A certain element felt emboldened now. We were days away from a new administration that had promised to unleash hell on so many communities, so there was a menacing element, like: Soon we’ll be able to get you.

LINDA SARSOUR [Cochair and National Organizer]: In 2003, I was with my son, who was four years old at the time, in line at a bank in Brooklyn. It was winter, and I was wearing a long black coat and a black hijab. A middle-aged white man in the bank started yelling, “How can you serve people like this? They killed Americans. They are animals.” He was looking directly at me, but I ignored him. He continued to scream and walk toward me, and my son was like, “Mommy, why is that man screaming at you? What did you do?” This is a four-year-old child. The man came directly next to me saying, “We will get rid of you all.” One of the bank tellers asked him what he needed so she could get him the hell out. Eventually he left, but I felt so unsafe. My office was across the street, but I didn’t go there. I jumped on a bus
so he wouldn’t follow us into the building.

Times are the same and maybe even worse than they were then. I don’t want to see the threats. The vitriol is just draining. It’s not that I’m afraid of it, but it’s draining. I wear hijab. And I’m from Brooklyn. There was a moment when I realized that I am this administration’s worst nightmare. And not only that, but I also was resonating with people far and wide across this country.

MICHAEL SKOLNIK [Board Chair of The Gathering for Justice]: One of my duties was security. I’ll never do that again. It’s an awful feeling knowing that there might be some car out there with a bomb. No insurance company would give us insurance. Thirteen companies denied us. I ended up calling my aunt, who’s in the production side of the music business, to ask who insures Coachella, and I called that broker. The Friday before the rally, at five o’clock, he said, “You’ve got a deal—but this is the most expensive policy I’ve ever sold.” This guy insures Coachella! It ended up being $108,000. For one day.

TAMIKA: It was so intense. You know, just in terms of all of the stress. It was almost like we were in a bubble. There were moments when we were in that hotel, in the basement where it felt like being underwater at the bottom of the ocean.

MARIAM EHRARI [Deputy of Operations and National Organize]: I kept running into Trump supporters and many Russians in the hotel and thought, Is this real?

“No insurance company would give us
insurance. I ended up calling my aunt,
who’s in the production side of
the music business, to ask who insures
Coachella, and I called that broker.
The Friday before the rally, at five o’clock,
he said, ‘You’ve got a deal—but this is the
most expensive policy I’ve ever sold.'”
—Michael Skolnik

NANTASHA: It’s so funny, thinking back, on the things that weren’t negotiated until the last minute. Like, Oh, we need to have a
little office space, right? We need to have some type of war room, or peace room, or something. And then negotiating with the hotel to give us that space for free.

TOSHI REAGON [Music Director]: Janaye was doing all of these negotiations with the city through all of it. She is a badass, and in big meetings she would take out a map and say, “This is happening, and it’s happening here.”

JANAYE INGRAM [Director of Logistics and National Organize]: There was a whole range of emotions, staying at the Watergate. There was the very stark, contrasting reality of seeing people who were probably opposed to our very existence, who were also staying in the hotel and going to balls. And we had the hotel staff saying to us, you know, “Please don’t tell anyone you are here.” They didn’t want anyone to know that we were staying in the hotel, because they had all of these inaugural guests who were also there, and they felt it would hurt business.

MICHAEL: We were worried about security. We wanted to make sure that we were doing everything we possibly could to protect people. So we spent much of the week trying to get more security. But every firm in Washington was booked for the inauguration, and they didn’t want their guys or their women to work 48 hours. So we ended up hiring officers out of Philadelphia. We bused them in, about 57 security officers—mostly former police officers, civil service, FBI, and current officers off duty—so we had 175 in total, but that still wasn’t enough.

MYSONNE LINEN [Head of Security]: The thing is, everyone needed to be safe. Not just those on the stage and the speakers, but the whole march. We had an entire plan for how security would be inserted into the crowd, how they would march in the crowd, the exit strategy for an emergency.

PHOTO: Noam Galai/Getty Images

The crowd in Washington, D.C., at the Women’s March on January 21, 2017.

PAOLA MENDOZA [Artistic Director and National Organizer]: One of the hardest moments for me was accepting the fact that my son Mateo wouldn’t be able to go to the march. I knew the day of the march would be the busiest day for me. I also knew that Michael was going to be consumed filling in holes, so we had to make the decision to not bring our son on this historic day. I wish he could have seen in the flesh what his mama and papa did for him and his country. Mateo Ali wasn’t able to be there with us on January 21, but it was his spirit, his joy, and his love that carried us through that historic day.

TONY CHOI [Deputy of Partnerships]: Another thing I did was make sure people drank enough water. Movement people are terrible at taking care of themselves!

BREANNE BUTLER [Global Director and National Organizer]: It was insane. A few days before, the London lead called me to say, “Oh my God, they’re telling us now that our march is too big. Our permit doesn’t hold as many people as we’re anticipating and now they’re saying we can’t march there.” And this was, like, 48 hours before the march. And we decided, “Alrighty, let’s go as high up as we can [laughs] and try to see how we can turn this around.” We ended up getting approved through a petition in Parliament.

SARAH SOPHIE FLICKER [Women’s March Strategic Adviser and National Organizer]: Three days before the march, someone told us we had to talk to this woman who knows all about Internet safety. She told us, “On the day of the march, your Internet is going to go down. What is your waterfall plan? Where is your auxiliary Internet? It has to be off-site, in a secured place. How are you dealing with emergencies?” We were terrified.

ALYSSA: So we brought in the Digi Geeks, a superhero squad of kick-ass women of color working in social media and tech led by the extraordinary Stefanie Cruz. With less than 48 hours’ notice, they came on as our trusty reinforcements to essentially run all social media while we were in the dark at the march.

TAMIKA: There were a lot of different issues coming up. I think during that week, we dealt with the antichoice issue.

TONY: There were organizations that signed up through our website to be partners, and we were responding to them one by one. It wasn’t working. I sent out a mass email, bcc’ing everyone and saying, “If you want to be a partner, please reply and confirm and we will add you to the list.” Well, that may have been a mistake because some antichoice groups made it onto the list because their names were intentionally deceptive. The list should have been vetted better, but we were doing so much. From that point on, we did more extreme vetting of partners.

TAMIKA: We also dealt that week with Clinton supporters wanting her name to be included in the list of historical women that we were uplifting. There was a lot happening all at once.

LINDA: We chose not to invite Hillary or Bernie to speak. Nobody’s “invited” to march. Bernie showed up on his own in Vermont. But De’Ara was in contact with Hillary—which is what people assumed wasn’t happening. And not only were we in contact with her that morning, but she asked us, “How can I be helpful? Can I tweet in support of the Women’s March?” We said, “Absolutely.” So that day, she actually tweeted in support of us.

TAMIKA: I’ve been in the movement for a long time. I’ve had the FBI knocking on my door at five in the morning. I’ve witnessed some very intense moments. Whether it be organizing the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington, or the Million Man March twentieth anniversary. I’ve been in intense spaces where the work was constant and the stress level of everyone involved was up. But I have never, ever dealt with the intensity that we were in, in those last few days leading up to the march. And then the backdrop of that hotel, and what it represents in American history, was constantly looming.

I mean, I really found myself looking around my room for bugs. [Laughs.] I was looking behind the TV, in the light posts, looking for potential—you know, wiretapping. All of that was happening that week.

“I’ve been in the movement for a long time, whether it be organizing
the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington, or the Million
Man March twentieth anniversary. But I have never, ever
dealt with the intensity that we were in, in those last few days
leading up to the march.” —Tamika Mallory

CARMEN PEREZ [Cochair and National Organizer]: The night before the march we gathered in a room and I asked everyone to hold hands. We said the Assata chant together and I felt a vibration of togetherness. We had all given our souls for this moment.

JENNA: So at like six or seven the night before the march, I had a moment where I was like, You know what, we’ve done everything we can. All right, everyone, just put down your pencils, close your computers. That’s it. We were literally turning it over to the universe. There was just this moment of calm. I had been prepared to work through the night. I said, “I need to get a proper meal and go to sleep.” Which is not me—typically I’m hustling until the last minute. We all went up from the basement to go find food, and the lobby was packed with people dressed in black tie on the way to the inaugural ball. And that fucking sucked to see.

This article is adapted from Together We Rise, a new book by the Women’s March Organizers and Condé Nast, publisher of Glamour, which is available for purchase now.

Related Stories:



Source link