Women's March 2018: We Persist

The 2018 Women's March in photos: Here are the faces of people who participated across the world https://t.co/iFrUSgy5PC pic.twitter.com/mzdcXjRyFM

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) January 21, 2018

The turnout this weekend to marches and gatherings all over the US and the world answer the question people were asking this time last year: Is this a moment or a movement? It is not merely one movement, but several. A record number of women are now running for office in 2018. The #metoo movement, I think, took strength from the idea that women in numbers are a force to be reckoned with. Women's activism has affected health care and other issues, holding the line as best we can against an administration that has aligned with anti-abortion and anti LGBT forces in efforts to turn back numerous social advances.

Male allies also have stepped up and learned we can share power spaces together to accomplish good things, and that exclusion is a form of division and weakness, that women should be heard out, and silence about inequality has been violence to the people given the short end of the stick.

It's almost become a joke that the mainstream media has spent the last year interviewing panels of Trump voters and supporters, as if trying to figure out what those folks are seeing that eludes many others (and also try to understand why Trump's biggest fans hate the mainstream media so much). The true Trump fans might not be shaken by Trump's historically low poll numbers or even the disapprobation he gets from the organized and vocal "left" (and centrists and moderates and "Never Trump" Republicans) because they sincerely believe we're all falling for "fake news" (which has picked up the definition amongst them of being any news unfavorable to Trump).

I wish the media could focus on the people like myself, one of the millions of voters who know very well that Trump did not win the popular vote, that gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics affected this past election and have been doing so for some time. I wish we were able to discuss what one of the driving topics of conversation now has to be--registering eligible voters, ensuring all have ID's, getting every vote counted, and ensuring turnouts on election day are as notable and brave and inspiring as they are at protest marches. I think informing the people that they have a voice and can act as a corrective, collectively, through their own good efforts, would be a massive boon to our democracy and fight back against the lying and bad faith that Trump has come to represent. He has been as anti-science and environment, as ignorant about other cultures, as inept about the strength in our diversity, as we ever could have imagined.

There was a march in 2017. The airports and the malls and the parks and the capitol areas everywhere saw people become active and activist in this past year. This must persist because Trump and his administration and the Republican party for which they have stood has come to divide us, to try and deport Dreamers and take away rights and make us all smaller. We are large, and we contain possibilities. We are already great, and we need to fight back. We persisted, we will resist, we will support Democratic norms and diverse voices. We will try to keep the promise of America as a safe space for the religious pilgrim and the political refugee, and a productive space for the Dreamers and doers. We will.

Donald Trump, this is not just a promise. You may consider this a threat. We will be great--with or without you. And many of us think "preferably: without".