The Women's March Was an Unreal Experience

[dawn_felagund]

This was not my first rodeo. I went to my first rally in DC when I was twelve years old. While I've never been intensely active politically, I've marched and rallied across the years for the causes most near and dear to my heart

Comments

[heartofoshun]

Thanks for the link. I had not seen that piece. It is very moving and painfully accurate.

I haven't been to nearly as many marches on Washington as I have been to ones in San Francisco. I got plenty excited today to read on my Facebook and in news articles how many places there were with big demos that usually are not centers of protest. Indianapolis had 10,000. That seems like a small-time turnout by SF, or NYC, or DC numbers, but, wow! Indiana is Pence territory.

I keep telling myself that I came to consciousness in the 1950s and vaguely recall the McCarthy hearings rattling in the background on our first TV set and it scaring adults around me. I remember when I was a little kid my father talking about how Eisenhower was the big business president and his cabinet was made up of union-busting CEOs. I remember Ronald Reagan getting elected, the freakish governor of California who attacked demonstrators at UC Berkeley when I was a student there and placed the entire city under martial law with tear gas-spraying helicopters and riot police shooting people in the streets and killing one. It's not like I haven't lived through bad stuff before. The mythology of my childhood passed onto to me from older people was all about what it was like surviving the Great Depression when my grandmother talked about giving leftover from dinner to hobos who approached her backdoor from the railroad tracks and asked for food. People did survive (although not without a lot of lives and potential lost).

I do not know why this guy scares me so much. I think it is partly his total lack of civility, run-of-mill manners, ewww!--he's just so gross! I would not want to find myself in the same room with him--god only knows what he might do--grab a woman by the crotch? Make fun of a disabled person? I saw a photo of George W. Bush smiling in a photo on Friday at the inauguration and the caption said, "He's grinning because he is no longer the worst president we ever had." I kind of chuckled at that. Nothing about Trump makes me laugh!

Enough! We'll probably get through this--not all of us, but hopefully, with a lot of effort and more action, most of us.

[dawn_felagund]

I grew up in the opposite type of family. My parents were completely apolitical. They weren't registered to vote and didn't watch the news ... okay, they did. They watched the weather. I didn't really understand the differences between Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, until I was in high school.

I was galvanized by concern for the environment and then animal rights when I was a preteen and young teen. My parents, to their credit, always supported me in that. You know I kind of fell accidentally into advocacy for disadvantaged kids, but I'm eternally glad I did (even if it meant that I had to suffer through the school I did--that was also eye-opening and therefore necessary).

I detest the sudden affection and longing for GWB. (I know that's not what you're doing, but other liberals are!) Like, "I realize now that Bush wasn't so bad, why did I think he was so bad??" Because he was so bad!! The fact that he appears to be a step up from something is a testament to how low we've fallen.