What I saw at the 2019 Women’s March in Philadelphia

Oh, for the days of such fierce clarity, two long and painful years ago, when we came together — women and men, old and young, black and Latinx and white and Indigenous, in all our glorious LGBTQIA-ness — to register our collective shock and horror that Donald J. Trump had landed in the White House.

The truth is that our barely elected president was only the most visible manifestation of systemic ills: racism, xenophobia, corporate avarice, a surge of rightward nationalism here and across Europe.

Dire straits

And even if the House of Representatives found the cojones to initiate impeachment, which would be followed by a Senate trial overseen by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, with a team of House lawmakers as prosecutors and the Senate as jury (yes, folks, that’s how it works) — we’d still be in terrible straits, stuck with the possibly-even-more-frightening-because-he-actually-has-an-ideology Mike Pence.

The women’s marches themselves bore criticism that their leadership was too white, too privileged, too blinkered. Some of us wanted to work within the electoral system; some wanted to rip the whole thing down and build a socialist state. Some cared most about abortion rights; others fought the school-to-prison pipeline; still others wanted national health care or protections for trans people or an end to factory farming.

Leaving the pink hat at home

Still, those round-the-globe protests were gorgeous, ebullient parades through the streets from New York to Los Angeles, Nairobi to Mexico City. In Philly, we were 50,000 strong. Those marches were a fuse for months of activism: we sent postcards and wrote op-eds and sat down weekly in front of Senator Pat Toomey’s Philadelphia office. Some of us ran for office and won; the current U.S. Congress is nearly 25 percent women, a record high.

But I found it hard to summon the bright certainty of past years as I headed downtown on Saturday, sans pink hat. This year, ironies abounded.

While some of us — rallying under the auspices of the national Women’s March organization — clustered in LOVE Park, a second, locally organized march headed toward Eakins Oval. Some friends joked that the LOVE Park rally was the “trayf” (non-kosher) event, a cheeky reference to accusations of anti-Semitism on the part of some national Women’s March leaders. The local march, on the other hand, was marred by reports that its founder had made racist and transphobic statements and had removed $19,000 in donations from the group’s bank account.

So one side of the family wasn’t speaking to the other side.

Why march?

I know women who chose the local march because they found the specter of anti-Semitism too grievous and alienating. I know others so disheartened by the infighting that they just stayed home. As for me, after days of talking, reading, and reflecting, I opted for LOVE Park because I wanted to align with the national movement, in all its flawed, human, yeah-we’re-still-learning-how-to-do-this potential.

Besides, my absence wouldn’t register to anyone, while my presence meant a chance to bring all of myself — a queer, Jewish, feminist, currently able-bodied, white ally to people of color — to an event whose big-picture politics I endorse.

A worthy trip

It was worth the price of parking to hear 17-year-old Abby Leedy, a classmate of my daughter’s at Central High School and an activist with Sunrise, a youth-led environmental movement, speak with passionate urgency about climate change, environmental racism, and the right of every teenager, everywhere, to breathe clean air.

It was heartening to see tattooed 20-somethings and gray-haired veterans of protest out on the plaza once again. But the crowd felt diminished, divided. And if we squinted — oh, irony — we could see the other marchers at the opposite end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a boulevard designed as a unifying pathway of civic splendor.

Checks and balances

The Constitution’s framers built in checks and balances. In the uphill fight for social justice, we need to be each other’s consciences and curbs. When someone calls me on my white privilege, I should apologize — a real “I’m sorry” that lets in the other person’s hurt, my own shame at causing harm, and the action I can take to make things better.

At the same time, I commit to calling out anti-Semitism and homophobia when I hear them, and to staying in the conversation even when — especially when — it’s hard.

Never one voice

Here’s my fantasy, no irony attached: that in my city, founded on Quaker ideals of equality and human dignity (and yes, also on land once stewarded by the Lenape — history is complicated), the two women’s marches could have met in the middle.

From a distance, each gathering would have looked like an assemblage of ants. But as we drew closer, we would have begun to read each other’s signs, see each other’s faces. I wish we could have come together not to speak with one voice, but to ask the questions we must keep asking if we hope to be true allies, working messily toward justice and peace:

“Who are you? What brought you here today? How can we help each other?”