Women's March on Washington 1/21/17 c u there

[seemslikeadream]

more people showed up for this march than the combined history of protests in this country

the media during the protests against Nixon (which I was at) wondered why protest...it wouldn't accomplish anything...a year later Nixon resigned

[JackRiddler]

Here is an informal and tentative survey of the Women's March, based on what I saw in Washington and my own attempt to categorize the messages displayed by the protesters:

All ages were in attendance, of course, but the marchers were overwhelmingly young and energetic. I'd estimate that at least 2/3 were women.

The most frequent signage and other forms of display (costumes, paper mache, theater, singing, etc.) related to women's rights and abortion rights, also LGBTQ rights, with hundreds of thousands of pussy hats and signs or t-shirts typically reading "hands off my pussy/uterus," "feminist," and the like. By far. Generally these messages were not tied to parties, persons, or other issues.

Next most frequent in visibility were probably the generic anti-Trump messages (largely making fun of him, usual jokes). Typical of this was one huge sign reading, "We Fucked Up Bigly." At about the same visibility were straight pro-Clinton, Arrow-H, "I'm with Her," "Stronger Together," and the like, but not so that you could never look away and not see it.

At a similar level in visibility compared to the last two categories, at least as I observed it, were displays devoted to a variety of existing radical movements and issues that have come to be associated as the new left. In this I am combining Black Lives Matter, climate and ecology, immigrant rights, income inequality, No DAPL, socialist groups, etc. There was a huge beautiful globe decorated with clouds being rotated by a crowd near the Washington Monument, but we did not got too near to that.

There was little organized union presence that I saw, although unions filled a couple of hundred buses from New York. Big D-orgs like MoveOn and DFA were not generally evident on the ground, although of course they did send out e-mails before the march. This march was organized ad-hoc and stayed that way, and I think that's just as well. So there was a political diversity.

Definitely present but less so than the above categories was the stuff about Russia taking over the United States, some of which really belonged more in an early cold war rally calling for the execution of the Rosenbergs (commissar costumes, hammer and sickle, slogans in Russian, etc.)

There was a smattering of Sanders-related stuff, and I have heard reports that some who had worked for the campaign chose to stay home. Presumably there were many Sanders voters among those displaying the issues-related signage, as described above. (Like our own group, with our big banner supporting protection for immigrants and refugees. People after all did not vote for Sanders because of a cult of personality, but because of the issues to which he spoke.)

Relatively missing was the city's black community. There were of course a lot of people of every color and it was a highly diverse crowd but if a large proportion of the city's majority black community had shown up I expect it would have been obvious. Again, I'm just me, but if it's an indicator I probably saw more white people holding up BLM signs (very good of course) than black people. This is a very long-term problem with U.S. movements and has rarely been overcome.

I have to say it is what it is and if we start the history clock on Jan. 20 with the accession of this beast, this response was as fantastic and promising and energetic and unprecedented and perfectly timed as I could have imagined; if still inchoate and evolving. There were millions of people all around the country and all the other places in the world where there were rallies! The big international response is crucial, for a rally originating in the United States (if outside the scope of my "survey.") And I think there was an awareness that none of the announced assaults of the new government will be stopped without continuing, stubborn organizing and resistance.

(Please note all the disclaimers. This is only what I saw. We went the entire route of the protest with a lot of back and forth and also stopped at various points and thus saw many long segments march past and big crowds gathered in open areas. But I didn't see everyone!)

[JackRiddler]

Glenn Beck Thinks The Women’s March Was George Soros/Radical Islam ‘Astroturf’

He and his new friend Samantha Bee can do a comedy routine about it.

.

[seemslikeadream]

any reports on violence at all?

I didn't see any

1 million people gathered and there was no violence

Glenn just doesn't want anyone to forge who he is

[Project Willow]

Looking at the anit-Trump aspect, it just makes me think, gee, if I had a large media company, I could drive hoards of people into all kinds of activities, like a big machine. More than a 100,000 people marched right past the homeless tent city on my street, and there wasn't a peep about it.

[Heaven Swan]

Thanks for the reportage Jack.

The Washington crowd signage, etc sounds similar to the NYC one. In NYC there were less pussy hats (maybe they were being handed out in DC?) and less pro-Hillary signs, I think there were many in DC who had planned to come for her inauguration and maintained their bookings and plans.

Yea the signage was very creative and grassroots. One of my favorites was "The Future is Nasty!" Ha ha

Re: the "white issue"
Same in NYC. I was surprised that although the crowd was diverse there was a noticeable 'white' majority, which to me seems like quite a feat in NYC. I too loved that so many 'whites' carried Black Lives Matter and other supportive signs and that the organizers made an effort to be inclusive re the speakers.

I asked one of my friends who I was supposed to go with (I need to change jobs) who did go to DC and is black why she thought the blacks didn't show up en masse. She said that there probably hadn't been enough outreach in the hood.

Well maybe if we keep showing support and good intentions and do more outreach the situation will improve. At the big NYC BLM march probably one third of the crowd was white so there is mutual support and cross-pollination happening to be sure.

Here is an informal and tentative survey of the Women's March, based on what I saw in Washington and my own attempt to categorize the messages displayed by the protesters:

All ages were in attendance, of course, but the marchers were overwhelmingly young and energetic. I'd estimate that at least 2/3 were women.

The most frequent signage and other forms of display (costumes, paper mache, theater, singing, etc.) related to women's rights and abortion rights, also LGBTQ rights, with hundreds of thousands of pussy hats and signs or t-shirts typically reading "hands off my pussy/uterus," "feminist," and the like. By far. Generally these messages were not tied to parties, persons, or other issues.

Next most frequent in visibility were probably the generic anti-Trump messages (largely making fun of him, usual jokes). Typical of this was one huge sign reading, "We Fucked Up Bigly." At about the same visibility were straight pro-Clinton, Arrow-H, "I'm with Her," "Stronger Together," and the like, but not so that you could never look away and not see it.

At a similar level in visibility compared to the last two categories, at least as I observed it, were displays devoted to a variety of existing radical movements and issues that have come to be associated as the new left. In this I am combining Black Lives Matter, climate and ecology, immigrant rights, income inequality, No DAPL, socialist groups, etc. There was a huge beautiful globe decorated with clouds being rotated by a crowd near the Washington Monument, but we did not got too near to that.

There was little organized union presence that I saw, although unions filled a couple of hundred buses from New York. Big D-orgs like MoveOn and DFA were not generally evident on the ground, although of course they did send out e-mails before the march. This march was organized ad-hoc and stayed that way, and I think that's just as well. So there was a political diversity.

Definitely present but less so than the above categories was the stuff about Russia taking over the United States, some of which really belonged more in an early cold war rally calling for the execution of the Rosenbergs (commissar costumes, hammer and sickle, slogans in Russian, etc.)

There was a smattering of Sanders-related stuff, and I have heard reports that some who had worked for the campaign chose to stay home. Presumably there were many Sanders voters among those displaying the issues-related signage, as described above. (Like our own group, with our big banner supporting protection for immigrants and refugees. People after all did not vote for Sanders because of a cult of personality, but because of the issues to which he spoke.)

Relatively missing was the city's black community. There were of course a lot of people of every color and it was a highly diverse crowd but if a large proportion of the city's majority black community had shown up I expect it would have been obvious. Again, I'm just me, but if it's an indicator I probably saw more white people holding up BLM signs (very good of course) than black people. This is a very long-term problem with U.S. movements and has rarely been overcome.

I have to say it is what it is and if we start the history clock on Jan. 20 with the accession of this beast, this response was as fantastic and promising and energetic and unprecedented and perfectly timed as I could have imagined; if still inchoate and evolving. There were millions of people all around the country and all the other places in the world where there were rallies! The big international response is crucial, for a rally originating in the United States (if outside the scope of my "survey.") And I think there was an awareness that none of the announced assaults of the new government will be stopped without continuing, stubborn organizing and resistance.

(Please note all the disclaimers. This is only what I saw. We went the entire route of the protest with a lot of back and forth and also stopped at various points and thus saw many long segments march past and big crowds gathered in open areas. But I didn't see everyone!)

[IanEye]

[liminalOyster]

I’m having a funny feeling this AM reading about the march. It seems, from where I sit, a bit like a vindication of one of the least popular and most maligned sentiments on the Left over the past few decades - that allowing a Trump-like cretin into power (with it’s corollate rejection of that year’s neoliberal dem) may make things “worse” before they get “better,” but also may inspire a level of organization and demonstration by progressives never before seen. Every time a Susan Sarandon type got maligned in the years since 1999, it was for suggesting that exactly what we are seeing would happen. So I’m hopeful. That’s a bit of relief. Enough, even, to make me feel it’s OK to just go ahead and celebrate, also, the death of the TPP.

[liminalOyster]

[JackRiddler]

I’m having a funny feeling this AM reading about the march. It seems, from where I sit, a bit like a vindication of one of the least popular and most maligned sentiments on the Left over the past few decades - that allowing a Trump-like cretin into power (with it’s corollate rejection of that year’s neoliberal dem) may make things “worse” before they get “better,” but also may inspire a level of organization and demonstration by progressives never before seen. Every time a Susan Sarandon type got maligned in the years since 1999, it was for suggesting that exactly what we are seeing would happen. So I’m hopeful. That’s a bit of relief. Enough, even, to make me feel it’s OK to just go ahead and celebrate, also, the death of the TPP.

I get it. The only problem is that you have unified government (which will be even more so if Trump goes) that need not be moved by anything short of a long general strike or economic disaster and upheaval. Or being voted out massively down the line. But they control most of the electoral levers through the money machines on the state levels, the gerrymandering, the EC system, the media bootlicking to office, the huge and effective organizations they've built, and of course and most crucially the control of state election boards and counting systems and the voter suppression mechanisms. Their minority is more than big enough to sustain all that, so fuck the long-term demographics (which they will try to change now - watch out if there's an open natalist program). So they can set the agenda and weather the protests, and pass anything they desire, and they have consensus amongst themselves on a dream program and ways to make it irreversible (like shifting federal lands to the states - let the next government if it comes try to get them back before they're privatized!). Oh yeah, the agenda: they also have 90% control in deciding what the next crisis will be. This too can alter what people think. (See, e.g., that little thing called "9/11." But there are so many other varieties.)

By the way, just checked and according to the Google, the R's actually won the popular vote in the House 2016 election:

R 63,153,387 (50.6%) + D 61,776,218 (49.4%)

= 124,929,405 (100% of 2-party count)

A proportional Congress would have had 220 R's and 215 D's, a spread of 5, as opposed to the 241-194 reality with a spread of 47.

Who knows the impact of the voter suppression, or of the 101 rigged counting-by-county systems? Stein wanted to find out for three states, and the D's did not get behind that. They were too busy yapping Cold War shit about "Russia." Wisconsin did a black box sampling and claimed a difference of some minuscule number (to Trump's favor). PA and MI both got killed before they were done. The Philadelphia recount had already cut the PA margin from 70K to 40K.

The House pop vote margin is 1,377,169 - half of the difference in favor of the D-candidate in the presidential. The game worked both ways to their favor. We do not have a system that represents voters, rather it yields winners by territory in a largely arbitrary game of obscure rules, and then the winners "represent" territory independently of vote. That's why all the state-based nationalisms alongside the big country nationalism. What's your state bird, liminal? (I think the sports/gameshow/action-movie complex also contributes: there's always only one winner, even if by a single point, and that winner is god, and the losers cease to exist until the next season or sequel.)

.

[liminalOyster]

I’m having a funny feeling this AM reading about the march. It seems, from where I sit, a bit like a vindication of one of the least popular and most maligned sentiments on the Left over the past few decades - that allowing a Trump-like cretin into power (with it’s corollate rejection of that year’s neoliberal dem) may make things “worse” before they get “better,” but also may inspire a level of organization and demonstration by progressives never before seen. Every time a Susan Sarandon type got maligned in the years since 1999, it was for suggesting that exactly what we are seeing would happen. So I’m hopeful. That’s a bit of relief. Enough, even, to make me feel it’s OK to just go ahead and celebrate, also, the death of the TPP.

I get it. The only problem is that you have unified government (which will be even more so if Trump goes) that need not be moved by anything short of a long general strike or economic disaster and upheaval. Or being voted out massively down the line. But they control most of the electoral levers through the money machines on the state levels, the gerrymandering, the EC system, the media bootlicking to office, the huge and effective organizations they've built, and of course and most crucially the control of state election boards and counting systems and the voter suppression mechanisms. Their minority is more than big enough to sustain all that, so fuck the long-term demographics (which they will try to change now - watch out if there's an open natalist program). So they can set the agenda and weather the protests, and pass anything they desire, and they have consensus amongst themselves on a dream program and ways to make it irreversible (like shifting federal lands to the states - let the next government if it comes try to get them back before they're privatized!). Oh yeah, the agenda: they also have 90% control in deciding what the next crisis will be. This too can alter what people think. (See, e.g., that little thing called "9/11." But there are so many other varieties.)

By the way, just checked and according to the Google, the R's actually won the popular vote in the House 2016 election:

R 63,153,387 (50.6%) + D 61,776,218 (49.4%)

= 124,929,405 (100% of 2-party count)

A proportional Congress would have had 220 R's and 215 D's, a spread of 5, as opposed to the 241-194 reality with a spread of 47.

Who knows the impact of the voter suppression, or of the 101 rigged counting-by-county systems? Stein wanted to find out for three states, and the D's did not get behind that. They were too busy yapping Cold War shit about "Russia." Wisconsin did a black box sampling and claimed a difference of some minuscule number (to Trump's favor). PA and MI both got killed before they were done. The Philadelphia recount had already cut the PA margin from 70K to 40K.

The House pop vote margin is 1,377,169 - half of the difference in favor of the D-candidate in the presidential. The game worked both ways to their favor. We do not have a system that represents voters, rather it yields winners by territory in a largely arbitrary game of obscure rules, and then the winners "represent" territory independently of vote. That's why all the state-based nationalisms alongside the big country nationalism. What's your state bird, liminal? (I think the sports/gameshow/action-movie complex also contributes: there's always only one winner, even if by a single point, and that winner is god, and the losers cease to exist until the next season or sequel.)

Agreed entirely. But if the impressive numbers this weekend are any omen, it seems (very optimistically speaking) conceivable to have a true movement that poses much greater challenge to the new Republican power-lock. It must be possible to build a movement that cannot simply be weathered, no? Seems like DAPL will be the first big test of what comes next, after his executive orders this afternoon.

[JackRiddler]

True that, also. Just a different game, and a much more dangerous one. There can only be one winner! That sucks.

liminal, can you do me a favor my vain self does not deserve? No, never mind. Since I kept editing after you posted, I was going to ask you to edit and quote the re-edited full version of my comments, with all the stuff with the numbers. Because people presumably only read the latest post. But I can just do that myself:

I’m having a funny feeling this AM reading about the march. It seems, from where I sit, a bit like a vindication of one of the least popular and most maligned sentiments on the Left over the past few decades - that allowing a Trump-like cretin into power (with it’s corollate rejection of that year’s neoliberal dem) may make things “worse” before they get “better,” but also may inspire a level of organization and demonstration by progressives never before seen. Every time a Susan Sarandon type got maligned in the years since 1999, it was for suggesting that exactly what we are seeing would happen. So I’m hopeful. That’s a bit of relief. Enough, even, to make me feel it’s OK to just go ahead and celebrate, also, the death of the TPP.

I get it. The only problem is that you have unified government (which will be even more so if Trump goes) that need not be moved by anything short of a long general strike or economic disaster and upheaval. Or being voted out massively down the line. But they control most of the electoral levers through the money machines on the state levels, the gerrymandering, the EC system, the media bootlicking to office, the huge and effective organizations they've built, and of course and most crucially the control of state election boards and counting systems and the voter suppression mechanisms. Their minority is more than big enough to sustain all that, so fuck the long-term demographics (which they will try to change now - watch out if there's an open natalist program). So they can set the agenda and weather the protests, and pass anything they desire, and they have consensus amongst themselves on a dream program and ways to make it irreversible (like shifting federal lands to the states - let the next government if it comes try to get them back before they're privatized!). Oh yeah, the agenda: they also have 90% control in deciding what the next crisis will be. This too can alter what people think. (See, e.g., that little thing called "9/11." But there are so many other varieties.)

By the way, just checked and according to the Google, the R's actually won the popular vote in the House 2016 election:

R 63,153,387 (50.6%) + D 61,776,218 (49.4%)

= 124,929,405 (100% of 2-party count)

A proportional Congress would have had 220 R's and 215 D's, a spread of 5, as opposed to the 241-194 reality with a spread of 47.

Who knows the impact of the voter suppression, or of the 101 rigged counting-by-county systems? Stein wanted to find out for three states, and the D's did not get behind that. They were too busy yapping Cold War shit about "Russia." Wisconsin did a black box sampling and claimed a difference of some minuscule number (to Trump's favor). PA and MI both got killed before they were done. The Philadelphia recount had already cut the PA margin from 70K to 40K.

The House pop vote margin is 1,377,169 - half of the difference in favor of the D-candidate in the presidential. The game worked both ways to their favor. We do not have a system that represents voters, rather it yields winners by territory in a largely arbitrary game of obscure rules, and then the winners "represent" territory independently of vote. That's why all the state-based nationalisms alongside the big country nationalism. What's your state bird, liminal? (I think the sports/gameshow/action-movie complex also contributes: there's always only one winner, even if by a single point, and that winner is god, and the losers cease to exist until the next season or sequel.)

.

[NeonLX]

Agreed entirely. But if the impressive numbers this weekend are any omen, it seems (very optimistically speaking) conceivable to have a true movement that poses much greater challenge to the new Republican power-lock. It must be possible to build a movement that cannot simply be weathered, no? Seems like DAPL will be the first big test of what comes next, after his executive orders this afternoon.

There will have to be a massive coming together or coalition of "causes" for the opposition/resistance to hold. DAPL sounds like it went south (big shock) so whatever one's cause is, add this to the list of things to oppose/resist.

We truly are "all in this together".