What I Saw, Why I Went, & What I Learned
Women’s March in Charlotte
What struck me most, flipping back through my photos from the Women’s March in Charlotte, is the sheer number of people who are smiling.
The Women’s March that took place around the globe on January 21, 2017 has been characterized as a day of protest, and in the truest sense, it was. But this protest was not marked by an angry mob of looters or shouters burning leaders in effigy or getting into altercations with police.
Though some groups and political interests would like for us to believe that the Women’s March was simply a giant, vulgar temper tantrum about nothing more than sore losers lamenting election results, what I saw didn’t look like that at all.
What I Saw
I saw little girls in superhero costumes. I saw American flags, veterans in camo, and dads donning baby carriers. Silver-haired men in cowboy hats marched alongside drag queens and dred-headed women pushing strollers.
This “protest” had people laughing, smiling, and singing. Call-and-response chants with no clear leaders reverberated through the crowd: “No hate in our state,” they said. “This is what democracy looks like.”
People shared snacks and water, passed out flowers, and sat atop the shoulders of others while blowing giant bubbles over the crowd.
I heard a man’s voice shout down from a window, several stories above the street, “Way to go, Charlotte!”
The undercurrent of righteous anger was palpable, but the tone of the crowd bordered on celebratory.
I didn’t know what to expect when I made the decision to go. I just knew that democracy requires us to show up and participate. I knew that I needed to go stand in the street and be counted as one who can be counted on — to pay attention, to not be silent. To participate.
As we got closer to the march’s departure point, traffic slowed and groups of people with signs and balloons and buttons crowded the sidewalks, all headed in the same direction as I. And I started feeling like this was bigger than I thought, more important than I thought.
One lady’s sign read: “Look, ya’ll! We’re the majority!”
Why I Went
I went because I love my country, its Constitution, and its promise.
I went because our newly-elected President wants to restrict my bodily autonomy and withdraw our nation’s leadership from the world stage, and because he has — throughout the course of his life — treated our nation’s institutions, middle class, and democratic norms with contempt.
I went because of a deep devotion to democracy.
As part of my devotion to democracy, I’m dedicated to pluralism, believing that people who are like me and different than me, who believe differently and similarly, who agree and disagree with me, who I don’t understand or do, are all still people deserving of their Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection under the law.
As part of my devotion to democracy, I am also committed to public education and net neutrality, believing that equal access to information and opportunity are fundamental democratic imperatives.
Additionally, I’m concerned about the diminished separation between church and state in our social consciousness, believing that their separation is the best way to keep each free to protect its own integrity.
I’m concerned, too, about surveillance and electronic data collection, believing that our Fourth Amendment rights are, in part, intended to protect us from governmental snooping.
I’m also invested in protecting our First Amendment rights to speak truth to power, to know what our government and our representatives are doing on our behalf, to dissent and to support, to create without hindrance, to follow the tugs of our moral compasses, and to gather together as a community for any of those purposes.
I marched because I want a revolution of informed conversation.
I marched because I love our messy and beautiful democracy, and I believe fully in the ongoing pursuit of a more perfect union. Democracy is a habit, a practice, and a process. We must want it badly enough to continuously give it our diligence.
But that might not be why you went. Or why someone else went. And that’s okay. That’s the point — we get to show up, we get to participate, and we get to add our voices and concerns to the public domain. And we get to do so freely.
And I think that makes America pretty damn great.
What I Learned
It’s too easy from behind my computer to think the world has gone nuts and I’m alone in my sanity, but every demographic segment that we can parse ourselves into was present in the streets of Charlotte, marching side by side — a snapshot of the American majority.
Though I had many reasons for attending the Women’s March, I left with something different than what I expected, something I didn’t even realize how badly I needed.
I left with renewed hope that we’re not as divided as we might think.
