Sigh, I can assure you that his casual willingness to reduce women to meat is very troubling to a great deal of women. Sigh, harrumph and sneeze
Get over yourself, how many protestors are you hosting?
The lack of organization was a turnoff, certainly, but it was the extremely dismissive attitude toward people who actually live in the region and have actual experience coordinating large-scale events that did it for me. A number of people got banned for politely pointing things out like “where are people going to go to the bathroom?” and “you can’t decide to block roads and sidewalks and not expect the police to respond/non-attendees to get angry with you.” They were actually saying “if they won’t give us a permit, just show up anyway- they can’t arrest all of us!!” which is just a ridiculous thing for event organizers to say. And when people were asking for updates on the status of the march (because non-refundable tickets and hotel rooms were booked), the general attitude was “we’ll tell you when we’re ready to tell you; if you’re not supporting us 100%, you shouldn’t have bought tickets.” Their attitude toward people who asked about accommodations for disabled attendees was even worse.
As I said, I live in the area and many of us were flabbergasted at the lack of understanding of the infrastructure here- transportation, disability access, restroom access, laws on protests, etc.- and the unwillingness to address those concerns. I think they bit off more than they could chew and got scared when they started choking, which is what prompted most of the online clashes. But banning someone because they point out bathrooms are really limited in the protest area? Not the way to garner support.
I sure hope they clean that stuff up before the march.
Probably the other 300 to 400 other marches won’t all have the same problems. Idealists sure can be a pain in the ass at times.
The organizers have caught a lot of flak for being inattentive to intersectional feminism issues – i.e., obliviously white. That controversy also now may be causing backlash among some participants.
I think my wife wants to go the the one in Portland and drag me along.
I suspect the local marches will have a bigger impact than the Washington one will. Trump and friends won’t care a whit. Local politicians, who have to deal with their constituents more directly, might.
Good article. This is the perennial problem of the left, of course – everyone thinks their issues are the important ones and if those are not put front and center they won’t play. Race is the big one, but not the only one. So many wish to be heard. Not enough microphones.
Of course trump won’t care – do we have to reiterate what he cares about?
But even in far-off Washington, representatives still have to be re-elected.
Likely not. One of the things we tried to point out was if you get arrested in DC standing on the street, the local police handle everything. Not a huge deal. If you get arrested standing on the sidewalk, it’s a federal crime. The organizers were advocating that if they didn’t get a permit, attendees could simply walk en masse down the sidewalk- all 100,000 of them at the same time- and dare the police to arrest them. Federal charges on your record are very, very different than a local traffic ticket.
I am planning to go. I attended several large protests during the W era and found them to be energizing, not at all a waste of energy. I was on the fence early on when the coordinators didn’t seem to have a handle on the logistics, but they seem to have a better grip now.
Not disputing it but how did that come about?
I don’t think this is accurate. As far as I know, federal law only kicks in on federal property, and there is nothing that makes DC sidewalks necessarily federal property. Indeed, DC has a local law against blocking the sidewalk.
Not the one in DC, but my excuse is that I’m from California and it’s too long of a trip. Still, I have one local friend who is going to the DC march.
There will be a local march here in San Luis Obispo. I believe it’s the only march between Los Angeles and the Bay Area so hopefully it will be well attended. I will be marching along with my daughter. My son unfortunately has another commitment that morning otherwise the whole family would be going.
My wife and daughter are going. I have to admit that I’m a bit nervous since I saw that James O’Keefe is going to try to disrupt everything.
There’s one in Los Angeles on the twenty-first. Seeing as I have that day off work, I’m going to travel up and at the very least show solidarity with the marchers.
There’s one in Monterey and one in Santa Barbara.
I personally can’t attend the march in Washington, but hope to be present for a sister march in Eugene. Depends on how much I can get caught up on my work as this is my busiest time of year.
I understand Oregon will have about 3,000 attendees join the Washington event. Pussy hats are locally being knitted at a feverish pace as we speak. I don’t think you could find pink yarn in Oregon right now on a bet.
My wife (and several of our friends) are driving from Ohio to the march in Washington. I fully support her in her desire to go and be a part of the protest. I think the GOP and Trump are a direct threat to women and who am I to try to say she can’t/shouldn’t go be a part of this? It is important to her to be a part of this.
Personally though I think it is a waste of time - the Trump administration and the GOP will not care one bit about this protest other than to exploit any examples of poor behavior to further their agenda. My wife has had concerns about the organizational aspect that have been pointed out by others in this thread but she is not discouraged from going.
I’m going, although I find the march pretty frustrating - they won’t come out and say it’s an anti-Trump march, it’s all very obnoxiously vague, first they said we could bring backpacks and now they say we can’t, etc. But I think the optics are going to be pretty incredible and I think it’s important, so I’m getting on a bus at some unconscionable hour, getting off and hanging out in DC in surely miserable weather, and then getting back on a horrible bus. I’ve got some friends going with me. I’m working on our hats.
You know, men’s marches never seem to have a craft project involved.