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Why I’m Done Marching (at Least for Now)
On January 21, 2017, my husband and I participated in our city’s Women’s March. We were happy and proud on a day which, through its warmth and sunshine, seemed to smile on our enterprise. Since then, in the heat and the cold, we’ve marched for Science, marched for Immigrants’ Rights, marched against Racism, marched for Black Lives Matter, and marched for causes which I’ve since forgotten.
I’m done marching now. When various well-intentioned groups organized marches for both before and after Trump’s 2025 inaugural, I knew I’d be keeping my butt at home.
I refuse to march in protest of something that has already taken place.
Gathering with like-minded people, admiring their clever signs, and feeling righteous in numbers just doesn’t cut it for me anymore. No matter how many people showed up on January 19th, Donald Trump was still going to become president the next day. What the hell good did marching do? The march that counted was the one to the polls, but that march didn’t have quite enough feet to get to the destination.
When I expressed my thoughts to a political group on Facebook, I got many flavors of response, but most of them informed me of the critical importance of “visibility.” “Politicians need to know of our ‘presence.’” “Not marching is…
