The Hill We Climb: Women’s Rights Edition

 The Women’s March of 2017 may have concluded after a day of protesting, but in reality it was only the beginning of several changes to come. First, let’s get the facts straight: nearly 500k people attended the march in Washington D.C, far exceeding the expected 250k. Secondly, the protests were peaceful. While the exact effects of these facts aren’t so tangible, it is pretty reasonable to assume that these are what made the march so significant and influential. The size of the protest was a key factor in the march gaining the coverage it did, which is why although the day ended, the symbol and belief of the march never died out. 

Now, when diving into the actual march, I thought the second article we read brought up an interesting point: “Turns out, placing a highly visible hierarchy of self-appointed leaders at the top of a still-fluid grassroots movement is a recipe for deflection.” As proven in history, it is very easy to start out with good intentions but then get corrupted by the desire for power. While that is not necessarily what has happened here, it is quite plausible that the old leaders of the Women’s March Organization have turned a fight for women’s rights into a fight for power. We saw in class the main videos by the Women’s March Organization today. In these videos we saw that there were leaders, but I think the way in which they organized themselves as leaders is a much better and sustainable system, compared to how Mallory, Perez, Bland, and Sarsour organized themselves. These leaders were treated like celebrities, while the hundreds of thousands of people who joined the movement who created their fame were not given enough credit. However, the leaders in the videos reminded me more of a democracy, as each leader looked over a specific area of human’s rights. This division of powers will help the organization be taken more seriously and encourage people to join the movement, allowing it to be more impactful and long lasting in the fight for human’s rights. Human’s rights. That brings me to another controversial topic: what exactly does the women’s march stand for?

The first video we watched from the Women’s March Organization mostly covered the topic of abortion. It is pretty concrete that this topic involves women’s rights, as women are the people involved in the actual abortion. Yet, the other three videos we watched were about creating an equal economy, reimagining democracy, and ending white supremacy. Few times in these videos were women even mentioned, rather all human equality was emphasized. Therefore, it is pretty evident that the Women’s March Organization is a human’s rights movement, not just women’s rights. Several battles for equality across all humans, regardless of gender, race, wealth, etc., have been won since the Women’s March of 2017, yet the war has only just begun.