The Women's March on Washington

Today was the one year anniversary of the Women’s March on Washington. Exactly three hundred and sixty five days ago some half a million women (and men) came together in Washington D.C. to raise their voice in unison to repel the forces of bigotry, hatred, and greed that threaten to destroy everything we hold dear. We came together to grieve for the loss of a potentially the first female president of the country and to gather our collective courage to brave the storms to come. The Women's March was the first time in my life I had participated in a political protest.

(The scene at the Washington Monument the day of the historic Women's March on Washington. Credit: Chane W. Lee/New York Times)

I am, by nature, rather apathetic towards Politics. Since my younger days growing up in India where the Politics is nothing but a brutal game of survival meant to enrich the wealthy and rob the poor, and the Politicians are a step or more below the thugs and violent criminals that litter that landscape, I have felt a keen distaste for the whole. Coming to America did absolutely nothing to change that viewpoint. American politics, while less obviously fake, and American Politicians, while significantly more polished, are no better at the core than their counterparts in India. And so it was that I never really paid much attention to the elections that rolled around every few years. I would listen in passing to the conversations around me about the various merits and faults of the two sides, but I would never really invest in either. Of course, I had an opinion on the issues, but I was keenly aware that my opinion had no place or power in a country where I wasn’t even a permanent resident.

When Hillary Clinton first ran against Barack Obama in the primaries of the 2008 election cycle, I knew her only as the scorned wife of Bill Clinton, possibly the most famous US President in India. I watched that election cycle with a remote clinical interest to see if this country that had, and still does, one of the most racist pasts would elect a black man over a white woman. We all know how that election turned out. Though Hillary Clinton lost that primary to Senator Obama, she went on to become the Secretary of State during President Obama’s administration. I watched as the country around me rallied behind their first black President. And I watched as he, along with his administration, made strides and missteps in equal measure for the eight years they were in office.

When Secretary Clinton launched her bid for the presidential race of 2016, I was pleasantly surprised and more interested than I had been in the previous election cycle. I feel no shame in admitting that I was not Team Bernie, not because I didn’t like Senator Sanders, but because I admired Hillary, the woman, far more. Whatever my disagreements with her personal choices or her professional decisions, she represented the type of strength and perseverance I expected to see in a leader. She had shown the resilience we all aspire to in the face of some of the worst obstacles and tragedies. To me, she represented hope.

When Donald Trump launched his bid for that same presidential race, I was surprised and repulsed. Trump had always exemplified the sleazy, perverted old man stereotype. The more I had learned of him through my years in this country, the more I had come to despise him and his ways. The Republican primaries race had me biting my nails in terror. It was mind-boggling that anyone in the most powerful country in the world could think that Trump was the answer to their problems. When he won the primaries, I seriously considered that we were all living in the Matrix. As Election Day came closer and closer, as debate after debate passed with Trump bullying, bluffing, and bullshitting his way through, as the media reported increases in incidents of hate speech and violence, and as they covered Hillary’s emails again and again, I grew deeply concerned. It was as though a premonition had started to build in my very soul. And then it happened.

The memory of that night in American history is forever burned into my brain. I remember Election Day. I remember being at work, and being unable to focus. I remember this sense of nervous excitement, and cold dread fighting for supremacy in my conscience. I remember moments where the anxiety would get the better of me and I would struggle just to breathe. In my three decades of life and my decade of living in America, I had never experienced anything like it. On the eve of November 4th, 2016, I remember returning home from work, and turning on the news. This was quite out of the ordinary for me. I don’t normally watch the news. But that evening and into the night, I couldn’t watch anything but the news. I couldn’t make myself look away as the counts came in state by state. I couldn’t fall asleep as the night turned into early morning. And I couldn’t believe, despite all of my subconscious apprehensions that America had chosen a morally and financially bankrupt white man as their commander in chief. I couldn’t fathom that this country that I had come to love and finally consider home had elected a rapist and repugnant rogue as the leader of the free world. That night, I didn’t sleep for even a minute, something that I had not voluntarily or involuntarily done since my college days. That morning, as I took the train to work, the ride felt undeniably funereal. Nearly everyone was wearing gray or black, not the most common colors for the fashion capital of America. Except for a few hushed whispers, no one seemed to be engaging in happy conversations. New York City as a whole was in shock. That shock turned to anger by the evening of November 5th. The city became the site of several large impromptu protests as the people worked through the second stage of grief and loss. Over the next few weeks, we struggled with bouts of anger, attempted to bargain our way through to some sort of rational outcome, but none of it worked. Eventually we arrived at depression.

That was the stage I was at when the Women’s March on Washington, a nascent protest that grew from one grandmother’s desire to seek solidarity and comfort from the sisterhood, rode to the forefront of the nations new cycle. My friends and I made plans to attend. We made all the necessary arrangements to travel down to D.C. We bought the shirts. We donated to the cause. We made posters and signs to carry with us.

And then one friend and I drove down from New York City to another friend’s home in Northern Virginia. That interstate drive was unlike any I have experienced in my life. The sheer volume of cars and buses on the highway surpassed anything I had ever seen, surpassed even the volume I normally see around Thanksgiving. Every time we stopped at a service plaza, we were swept up in a wave of women, with a smattering of men dotting the scene. We didn’t see any accidents. We didn’t see any arguments or fights. What we was saw was a lot of shared smiles, a lot of rising excitement, a shared sense of significance, and most of all a sense of solidarity. We were ready. It was time.

The next morning my friends and I walked over to the train station to take the metro into D.C. The line, nay the crowd to get into the metro station was ninety minutes long. Again, there was no pushing, no shoving, and no impatience. There was a lot of chanting, a lot of singing, and a lot of laughter shared over clever signs. Getting on the train was another experience like none before. Though the train stopped at every stop along the route, there was no space for people to get on. And yet the women smiled and persevered. I imagine none of us cared when

we got there, we just wanted to get there. What followed that day was a series of rousing speeches, impassioned yet peaceful protest, and a lot of emotional tears. We sang, we cheered, we chanted, and yes, we marched.

We lay down our signs on the grass in front of the white house as promises to the man who had won that we would be watching and that we would act. And as we walked back to the train stations to return to whence we came from, we finally moved on to acceptance, acceptance that Donald Trump was the President on the United States, acceptance that we the people who have to raise our voices everyday for the foreseeable future, and acceptance that it was time to fight back. That was a day that I will never forget.

On the drive back up to New York City, my friend and I purchased newspapers as mementos from this moment in history. The Women’s March was front page news that day. My friend and I looked at each other and shared a moment of excitement, a moment of realization that we did this. We women brought about this moment in history. I still have that newspaper. In my darkest hours, when I feel defeated be life and by the world, I pull it out to remind myself of the strength of women, of our resilience. I plan to get it framed.

Though I was unable to march in the Women’s March on Washington: March on the Polls events taking place across the country and the world this weekend, I was with my sisters in spirit. I shed tears along with them for the losses this past year, and I pumped my fist for the wins. In the aftermath of the 2016 Presidential election, I shut down emotionally and mentally. I put up walls to keep out the people who I blamed for bringing us to this point in time. I stopped trying to understand them. It has taken me a year to start engaging in the difficult conversations again, to try to listen without attempting to convert someone’s opinions to my own. I’ve learned in this past year that thought I cannot vote I can use my voice and my intellect to engage with the people around me. I’ve learned that the only way forward is to keep asking questions. I’ve learned that if I allow myself to be filled with hatred for the people that voted for Trump, I only drain myself of the energy and the strength that allows me to keep fighting on. And so one of my resolutions this year is to listen more, to love more, to keep fighting for the rights of the less fortunate, and to keep marching…with love.