Saturday's marches and rallies. Wow. Huge, huge crowds, even the little place, even in the heartland. Some say it was the biggest demonstration in US history.
It is now estimated that between 3.3 million and 4.6 million people turned out for the Women's March Saturday. There were large turnouts in large cities and large turnouts on small towns. Even in Alaska's winter people turned out! In some cities the crowds were too large for a march to even begin because the crowd covered the entire march route.
These crowds tell us something important: Democracy may have been thwarted in this election by voter suppression, FBI interference, lies and "fake news" propaganda that spread widely, even Russian involvement. But people are not going to accept what the Republicans and President Trump are trying to do with their illegitimate seizure of power. People are rising up to say, No!"
Democracy Facilitated, Not Organized
But there is another lesson here. This march was bottom-up. It was facilitated, not organized, by progressive groups. The idea came from a retired women in Hawaii.
"I didn't have a plan or a thought about what would happen," Shook told Reuters by phone from the island of Maui. "I just kept saying, I think we should march."
... "When I woke, up it had gone ballistic," Shook said.
It was a Women's March. A sea of pink hats across the country and world. People demanding equality on the job and in society, reproductive healthcare and basic human rights, not to mention personal safety -- the humiliating and disgusting things Trump said about women made it clear that he is not in any way shape or form on any woman's side.
People Rising Up
But the march was obviously more than that. Republicans want to try to take away everyone's human right to health care, saying it should only be for people who have enough money to pay for it. People are rising up to try to stop this. They say they are going to try to "round up" and deport millions of people, and persecute people because of their religion, and millions of people are going to fight them. They want to sell off our land to mining and oil companies. They want to privatize our roads and bridges -- even public broadcasting, so corporations can make money off of us instead of us serving each other.
The nominee for Secretary of Education has spent her life (and, oh, so much money) fighting to get rid of our public schools.
They actually are undoing efforts to stop putting so much carbon into the air and help prevent the from heating up even more.
So people are rising up to say no.
The Republicans are planning to break up every institution of democracy that we have. Our system might be so broken that We the People are unable to get our way in Washington, maybe we can't stop this from happening for now. But... There will clearly be strong resistance to the things they are trying to do to our government and our rights.
Pics
Click these to see pics that will only begin to convey the vastness of what happened Saturday. and these are just some of the paces where people turned out.
Lexington
Austin
Montpelier, 20K
Witchita
Santa Fe
Cincinnati
Nashville
Sacramento
Indianapolis
Anchorage
Boise
Atlanta
Tampa
Columbus
Salem, OR
Pittsburgh
Greenville
New Orleans
Peoria
Ashville
Omaha
Minneapolis
Lansing
Prescott
Kansas City
Portland
St. Petersburg
Albuquerque
Hartford
Denver
Madison, 75-10K
Flagstaff
Oakland
Seattle, 130K
Poughkeepsie
Ft. Worth
Detroit
St. Louis
Phoenix
Eugene
Boston
Las Vegas
Chicago
Oklahoma City
Los Angeles
Cleveland
Champaign
Philadelphia
Jacksonville
Dallas
San Francisco
Charlotte
Gainsville
San Diego
Little Rock
Topeka
Ann Arbor
New York City
Birmingham
San Jose
NYT has more pics here.
Meteor Blades is collecting local attendance numbers from people around the country, here.
There were also big marches in cities around the world like London, Berlin, Paris, Lisbon, Sydney, Melbourne, Cape Town...
Just The Beginning
MoveOn People’s Action, Working Families Party, and other groups are organizing (facilitating?) "Resist Trump Tuesday," "stop the #SwampCabinet" events around the country Tuesday, demanding Senators oppose the Trump agenda and nominees.
The Tea Party had all that Koch money pushing media coverage. We the People have yesterday, facilitated by social media that lets us bypass the corporate media gateways, and it's just the beginning.
