Guest Blog: Women's March on Washington

I knew this was a BIG event when, from the charter bus zipping across the Pennsylvania Turnpike through the foggy night, I saw an amazing number of other charter buses also heading East.  And when we stopped for the first time at a service plaza about mid-state, there were minimally 15 other buses also taking a break.  There was a crush of hundreds inside, either standing in line for the bathroom or in lines for food and/or coffee.  It didn’t take long to verify that ALL were headed to the March in DC.  The feminist messages on shirts, the “pussyhats” everywhere all gave it away in short order.  Women, many chatty with excitement at 4:00 am on their way to a highly-publicized and anticipated national protest, shared their cities and states of origin.  I was amazed at the group who’d gotten on their bus 24 hours earlier in Duluth, Minnesota--an almost 30 hour trip for them.  Wow.  My friends and I were only riding from Cleveland, about 8 hours.  And in about 5, we would all be in DC to meet up with hundreds of thousands like us from places farther and wider than that, by far.  I felt a part of something epic.

Sleep deprivation did little to dampen our enthusiasm upon arriving at RFK Stadium about 9:00 am.  There were buses as far as the eye could see in that enormous parking lot, and a steady stream were still arriving.  People, mostly women, were pouring off these boxy, monster vehicles and heading west in a steady mass toward the Capitol and the National Mall, where the rally for the march was to begin.  But not before opportunistic entrepreneurs arrived with boxes full of “Women’s March” t-shirts for sale, hailing us from near and far.  We couldn’t pull $20 bills out of our pockets and purses fast enough to capture a tangible memory of this historic event, and before we ever got to it.    

We walked through the residential neighborhood of Capitol Hill, passing by townhouses that got nicer and more grand as we got closer to the Capitol itself.  Signs supportive of progressive causes dotted lawns.  One couple came out to the sidewalk with a French press full of coffee, a full creamer and paper cups to give to the marchers.  Now that’s support!  As we continued west, our numbers grew larger and more diverse, coming from different directions, with more signs above heads exclaiming our thoughts, feelings, concerns:  “Women’s Rights are Human Rights,”  “Black Lives Matter,” “Make America Smart Again” and “Not My President.”  Once east of the Capitol, the vista expanded. The scene became one of a jaw-dropping sea of humanity converging and moving in one direction, toward the sounds of chants and muffled speeches at the southeast corner of the Mall, near the National Museum of the American Indian at Independence and 4^th SW.  It was after 10:00 am now and the rally was beginning there, at a large stage, from which a long line-up of speakers and musicians would gin up the already animated crowd.  (If only I could see and hear Gloria Steinem, that feminist icon I’ve admired all my life.)

It is difficult to describe the density of the masses of people that we encountered as we struggled around the National Museum of the American Indian.  When I say it was all but impossible to move in any direction once getting to this furthest southeast corner of the National Mall, I am not exaggerating.  If I suffered from clinical claustrophobia, I would have been in a full-blown anxiety attack, possibly causing a scene.  If I had fainted, I wouldn’t have fallen down.  That’s how tightly we were packed together.  Despite the reality of having minimal control over our own movement or how much body contact we were forced to have with complete strangers, I cannot describe how safe it all felt.  Everyone was kind, polite and in good humor.  And it was like this all day.  There were not enough porta-potties,  and we never could get near the stage where the speakers were addressing the crowd.  So close and yet so far.  That was easy to give up though.  We could watch all that online after we got home.  We decided to slowly inch our way north and maybe west.  That was the direction we all would move in a couple of hours anyway—around 1:00 pm—when the march toward the White House at 16^th and Pennsylvania Avenue began.  We’d get a “head start” on the main event if we headed that way early.

We made it to 4^th Street NW and Madison Drive, and to the East Wing of the National Gallery.  We stopped in there, with hundreds of others, to find restrooms.  Women invaded the Men’s room—there were SO many more of us.  We tried not to look in the direction of the urinals as we headed into the stalls opposite.   A little uncomfortable but the men were very cool and understanding.  Desperate times.  We ate in the cafeteria and couple of us had a beer.  It was a good break.

When we emerged onto 4^th Street it was probably 2:00 pm. The march had begun moving and the street was a solid mass of smiling, chanting progressive citizens expressing their issues in every way possible as they walked north toward Pennsylvania Avenue:  voices, clothing, signs, shirts, hats, hands and feet.  The diversity of our numbers was wide in every way:  gender, race, age, ethnicity.  It looked so representative of our nation.  We joined the slow steady movement and became part of what felt like one giant organism.  Here we all were, those who have felt so completely dispirited since November 8 when a man so unqualified in experience and so undeserving in personality and humanity won election as our President.  Our shock, disbelief and sadness has now been transformed into anger and action.  And we were together in the nation’s capital, publicly bonding ourselves, our energy and our commitment together toward the goal of resisting the threats his administration will likely pose to our civil rights and our safety in the world.  It feels wonderful to be here among our like-minded brothers and sisters in this peaceful demonstration.

Though the distance from 4^th Street to 16^th Street and Pennsylvania is only 12 blocks, it took almost 3 hours to walk it.  But it was OK.  We were moving.  And there was so much to take in along the way:  so many faces, so many messages to read, so many chants to join.  Some of my favorite chants:  “Tell me what democracy looks like—This is what democracy looks like!”  Or men starting with “Your body, your choice” and women following with “My body, my choice.”  Or “The people united will never be defeated.”   Walking by the Newseum, the museum honoring journalism and its history, with the First Amendment carved in it façade---so profoundly moving now that we have to worry about the survival of the free press.  A few blocks later we passed the Trump International Hotel, where a chant of “Shame, shame, shame” broke out.  And where, at the end of the march, hundreds of the protest signs that had been carried all day were left lying all along the perimeter of the hotel along the12^th Street side.  Just another message sent.

By about 5:00 pm, as daylight was starting to dwindle, I, unbelievably and against all odds in a crowd this size, found my dear sister, Marie, who had traveled from Florida to be a part of this—a high point of the day for both of us.  Soon after that, my friends and I were at 14^th Street, and decided that we had gone far enough. Since the official endpoint of the march was at 16^th Street in front of the White House, two blocks away, the crowd was really starting to back up and further movement forward would require a Herculean effort.  We didn’t have enough gas left in the tank for that.  So we started our journey back the couple of miles east we needed to cover so we could get back to our bus for its 7:00 pm departure back to Cleveland.  We split up—four walked the whole way, two of us (me included) decided to brave the Metro.  By the time we came up from underground in Capitol Hill, it was almost dark.  To celebrate our memorable day, we took time to duck into a little bar, had a quick sandwich and a drink, called an Uber to RFK Stadium and met up with our friends to wait for the bus.  We limped to our seats, got out our neck pillows and said goodnight.  We had done it.  We had been part of possibly the largest protest of a Presidential election in history—over 500,000 in DC, over 2 million worldwide.  We can only hope this is the start of something that will make a difference.

Cheryl