<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=192888919167017&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

Linkedin Pinterest

In Our View: Marches Grab Attention

Demonstration of what makes America great sends message to administration

The Columbian
Published:

It was, by any measure, an extraordinary day for the United States.

An estimated 500,000 or more people in Washington, D.C., according to city officials. More than 100,000 in Seattle; nearly 100,000 in Portland; hundreds of thousands more in cities across the United States and even other countries. They all rallied Saturday to protest Friday’s inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States, engaging in a movement that even drew about 150 people to an event in Vancouver.

Trump, it would seem, won the election fair and square, and he was inaugurated as is dictated by the U.S. Constitution. Yet, questioning the engagement of the protesters — as the new president has done — wrongly denigrates the demonstrations that took place Saturday as the United States celebrated its freedoms in a most vocal and peaceful fashion. Our civic duty does not end with an election; no, democracy calls for an engaged citizenry and an alert media that are paying attention when those in power least expect it, not simply during the election.

So it is that an idea conceived by a Hawaii grandmother as a women’s march to protest Trump grew into a widespread movement. Organizers started on the night of Nov. 8, when Trump was elected, and eventually coalesced several ideas into the Women’s March on Washington to be held the day after the inauguration. Leaders in numerous major cities picked up on the idea and added local events for those who could not make it to Washington, D.C. In several instances, the events morphed from marches into rallies because the crowds flooded the streets and made marching impossible.

At the signature event in Washington, D.C., Rabbi Sharon Brous told the multitudes: “Once it happens in a generation that a spirit of resistance is awakened. This is one of those moments. Our children will one day ask us, ‘Where were you when our country was thrust into a lion’s den of demagoguery and division?’ ” On Saturday, millions of people, including women, men, children, and those of different races and different creeds were making their voices heard.

It was a remarkable demonstration of what truly makes America great. Dissent, it has been said, is the highest form of patriotism, and Saturday’s events rank among this nation’s most memorable patriotic outpourings. Trump had campaigned on a platform of demonizing otherness, a platform that revealed a long personal history of misogyny. His assertion, captured on a 2005 video, that because he is famous he can approach women and “grab them by the p—y” galvanized much opposition against him, and the fact that he won the Electoral College vote does not mitigate the fact that he lost the popular election by nearly 3 million votes.

All of which places the new president in a tenuous position. Donald Trump is president of the United States, and the hope is that he can rise to the occasion, recognizing the reasons that supporters voted for him as well as the causes for unprecedented opposition. Ideally, he can become a president of which all Americans can be proud.

On Sunday, Trump asked on Twitter: “Watched protests yesterday but was under the impression that we just had an election! Why didn’t these people vote?” With this, Trump ignored the fact that he lost the popular vote and signaled that he is oblivious to a powerful message that was delivered Saturday.

That message: America, along with the rest of the world, is watching.

Loading...