Thoughts following the Women’s March

Our future generations will remember that on January 21st, 2017, 2.9 million people joined the Women’s March for peace and equal rights in an environment where we have been incited to take up the tools of war. This is the largest march in US history and regardless of outside efforts to disrupt the movement, the marches stayed peaceful.

We had 100,000 in Madison alone. It was powerful and unsettling to participate in a march of this size that aligned our local vision with a global one.

This isn’t going to be the last time people march in unison to make themselves heard. People get louder when they feel the threat of being silenced. And so, we have entered an era where it is no longer enough to live peacefully, but where those who want peace, who want fairness with their government and among people, must organize and fight for it.

The question is, who are you, as one out of many, and what will you offer of your strengths and your values? What do you understand about your role as a citizen? What do you still need to learn? With whom do you need to organize? When you fight to make sure that people won’t be silenced, how can you make sure that your own noise doesn’t drown out another’s individual voice? How will you take time to listen? How will you keep alive your vision of peace, at a time when all of us are mobilized by the wars waged against us? We didn’t ask to play games. We didn’t ask for a battle. And yet here we are. Our society is restless, and we have been called upon to rise to an occasion.

Tell me what democracy looks like?

My thoughts as I journaled this morning:

Who I am will always be in opposition to whom you want me to be. Nor will it matter how close to your ideal I may actually be.

The question is, can you still accept me? Are you willing to reconcile how you feel about who I am with your world views? Because only in that willingness can you truly begin to listen and to see.

Also want to pass this along: 10 Actions for the first 100 Days