Marching to Power

[DonViejo]

President Donald Trump ignited a fire within women. And it's still burning one year after the inaugural Women's March.

By Susan Milligan, Senior Writer | Jan. 19, 2018, at 6:00 a.m.

Donald Trump had just been sworn in as president, and millions of women responded by taking to the streets the very next day in what would become one of the largest, if not the largest, single-day demonstration in U.S. history. They clogged the streets of Washington, D.C. by the hundreds of thousands, while "sister marches" were held in venues big and small, including the ten who demonstrated in Adak, the westernmost town in Alaska's Aleutian Islands.

It might have been a one-day thing, kind of a counter-celebration to the lesser-attended inauguration the day before and a chance for the the losers to let off steam after the 2016 elections. Instead, the Women's March gave voice to frustrations and grievances women had been grumbling more quietly about for years. The number of women running for office (and winning already) has exploded. And as marchers prepare this weekend to hold similar (though most likely smaller) anniversary events across the country, those who attended the 2017 events have mixed feelings – excited about the women's activism they have unleashed, but wondering a year into the Trump administration, what the movement has accomplished.

"It's true that a lot of women have been elected" to state and local offices since the 2016 election, "and for that I'm very grateful," says Susan Eason, a retired teacher in Pittsburgh. "But I feel some of the energy has been dissipated a little. I feel we should be in the street all the time, protesting the horror."

For Phoenix attorney Toby Brink, who crossed the country last year to march in Washington, the excitement over the new wave of feminist activism is tempered by the knowledge that the Trump administration has nonetheless made inroads on limiting abortion and birth control access and getting conservative judges confirmed to federal courts.

"That makes me feel more pessimistic. I wish the media would focus as much time on what's going on silently," Brink says. Still she adds, "I do feel more hopeful" than immediately after the election. "The march had such an impact on me. It was the first time I had been to a protest march. I can't even think of an adjective" to describe the day, Brink says. "It was such a good experience after feeling so crappy from November until January. I felt relieved and hopeful after so many weeks of feeling devastated."

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https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2018-01-19/trumps-victory-spurred-women-to-demonstrate-and-run-for-office