NY2NJ boomer marches in DC

Well.  What kind of New Yorker, boomer, Jew, chronicler and most of all Hunter Girl – from our all-girls high school years -- would I be if I hadn’t gone to the Women’s March yesterday? 

I even went to the DC one, after three different girlfriends considered the trip and changed their minds, opting for local marches instead.  But, in fairness, I had an extra inducement; my daughter and her fiancé live there.  I could also spend a couple days with them.  And I had a free place to stay – combining activism and cheap getaway. 

So I get to say I was a part of the mother march in Washington. I got to buy the t-shirt, carry the sign, and show off pictures on Facebook.  I got to feel the climbing excitement and shared purpose, from the first sight of pussyhat wearers getting out of cars on my daughter’s quiet, Connecticut Avenue side street, to the jammed Metro trains at the station, to the converging streams of people – young, old, male, female, straight, gay, white, black, Asian, some pushing walkers, some strollers – heading from the downtown station to the Mall. 

The crowds were too large to find room on the train where I entered; I had to go north three stations to find room to go south.  They were also too large to let us off at Judiciary Square, the closest station to the march’s starting point; we surfaced somewhere on seventh street, near Chinatown.

I had three other friends who were going from NJ, by different ways, but as we kind of expected, we never met up. The crowds were too large to get cell signals to communicate, and just getting from point A to B was frequently impossible.  What’s amazing is how mellow the crowd stayed, when other people packed so densely might have panicked and started a stampede.  It’s made the news that anywhere from half a million to a million or more people there managed to generate zero arrests.   I’ve seen nothing to compare that with since the Simon and Garfunkel concert in Central Park; 1981, right?

I appear to have aged out of some of the shortcuts to the rally,

People were helping each other over this wall, but they all seemed 

20 and 30-something.

There was also zero visible security; no bag checks, no metal detectors to go anywhere but inside the museums.  March publicity warned people not to bring backpacks, but I saw several.  March organizers and guides were sparse, and bullhorns moreso. 

No, mellowness prevailed, even though the underlying motivation for our coming was fury, anxiety, loss and disbelief at how such a psycho, know-nothing fraud had managed to become president, and more  --- replace such exceptional integrity and intelligence. There was comfort in just being among so many like-minded people, so ready to be seen and heard, carrying sentiments that were not only right, but correctly spelled.

More than mellowness; strangers were quick to help each other scale walls, navigate fences, and to share snacks and information.  It was cold and damp, but spirits were high and warm. Rivers of people just flowed, holding signs, wearing the hats, chanting chants, drumming drums, taking pictures.  Few of us could get close enough to even see a Jumbotron at one of the intersections to Independence Avenue, nevermind an actual speaker. 

I only managed to follow people to a fenced-in area by the Air and Space Museum facing Independence, to hear Michael Moore teaching us the number through which we could contact our congresspeople and senators – every day.  202-225-3121.  Some ground cover got trampled on; I bet Trump complains about that. We were pretty careful around the shrubs. There were many in the trees, just like the olden days in Bryant Park or Central Park.

The signs were frequently inspired.

Unable to meet up with friends, I started conversations with many friendly, like-minded strangers, from the family of four on the Metro, who’d traveled four days by train from Pacifica, Calif.,  to the two young women friends in the cafeteria of the Museum of American History, one white, from Brooklyn, one black, from suburban Maryland, to the Hispanic couple from Los Angeles in the same cafeteria, who liked my recommendation to take in the Newseum the next day, to the “Nasty Nine” Jewish women from Chicago who I caught up with in a gridlock near the Washington Monument, to the two fifty-something women in the Lebanese restaurant back near my daughter’s neighborhood that evening, who I clapped with whenever the TV screen showed the day’s crowds. All literate, riled-up people with working bullshit detectors. Many able to afford a plane or a train ride across country to join up and speak out. 

As marchers paraded past, several entertainers on the sidelines 

siphoned off afew for a few minutes of dancing or listening

At the American History Museum

I got to take a nostalgia break.

Post event, about 5 pm on the Elipse. A spirited drum circle and a ginormous display
of contributed/abandoned signs. Mine's the yellow one in Russian and English.
 Thank you Hannah for the quality translation. I could tell by the thumbs up who could read it.

A day later, we can read all the analysis and counts; we can feel a movement launching.  But now I need to know what tools we really have.  What our leverage really is, as Senate, House, and White House all start to carry out their “promises,” i.e., threats.  There are so many; the cabinet appointments alone fall into the three categories of useful idiot, unscrupulous opportunist, and reactionary. 

What can work?  Making sure the investigations into Trump’s Putin connection aren’t quashed by Trump himself, now that he’s in power?  (The lady in the Lebanese restaurant has it on good authority that there were Russians toasting each other in Trump Tower on election night, and that they’ve got him over a barrel,  somehow… just wait till the dots are connected.) Or the conflict of interest angle, starting the impeachment process via emoluments violations?

We must quickly get past the understandable pride of knitting pussy hats and attending mass demonstrations and recognize this event for what it is: a kickoff.  Then we have to make more history, and in this kind of effort, it just possibly may take more time, energy and guts than anyone born after 1952 has ever had to summon before.