Re-evaluating The 2017 Women's March

On January 21, 2017, my mother woke me up at 7:00am, to catch the train to Boston. On the ride down, I’m fairly certain my mother tried to explain to me why we were on the way to somewhere an hour away, and how there was something important enough to entail waking up early on a weekend. She explained she was bringing me and my sister to the Boston Women’s March. And although I definitely remember the marching, and the signs, and the neon waves of pink hats atop thousands of heads, I’m not quite sure I grasped, at the time, the significance of the march, and why, exactly, we were there in the first place.

As I was reading the NY Times article on the marches, I was intrigued by one of the links that the article supplied. The link went to a 2005 transcript, Donald Trump’s Taped Comments About Women. I’d heard of the tape in passing, but I’d never listened to it myself, so I couldn’t help but listen to the tape, and wonder how someone with a worldview like Trump’s was allowed into the presidency. “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait,” he says. “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” Hearing something so vulgar as that, from a recent president no less, frustrated me to the point of speechlessness. No wonder we marched, my mother and sister and me. No wonder the world marched.

As we marched, I remember seeing a sign that read:

STOP:

Grabbing

Our

Pussies,

only adding to the list of creative signs the Times article mentioned. It’s crazy how many things people came up with on such short notice, and even crazier that so many people showed up at all! 

Given the significant turnout, it was surprising to see the analysis in the Slate article that the march didn’t really impact too many policies or incite much change beyond awareness surrounding the issue, (in part due to the limitations of having a small number of organizers, it seemed?). However, given the year-by-year statistics of women in seats of government Ms. Slater showed us, I’m hopeful that the march did have an impact on the government, even if it was slightly delayed. I would hope that the 3rd largest march in the history of the united states would create some reaction or another. If an attempt to find justice by that many people can't do anything, I'm not sure what will.