Wednesday, December 20, 2017

The Success of the Women's March and Beyond



Women from all over the world marched January 22, 2017 bringing a fresh look at grassroots organizing. Looking at a small community in Washington State where a march was organized at the last minute and several huddles formed in the aftermath of the march shows the saturation and impact of the Women’s March on women all over the United States. Starting with a Facebook post on Election Day of 2016, the Women’s March became the biggest worldwide grassroots movement, with millions coming out to resist Donald Trump’s presidency.  Through hard work, innovative organizing and the forethought to channel the energy from the election into the future, the Women’s March accomplished more than anyone could have predicted.  Though the national organizing committee for the March had some bumps and hurdles, they pulled together an organization developing tactics with flexibility that allowed a strong worldwide grassroots movement which continues to organize today.

Building up to the March
The resist Trump movement gained momentum during the 2016 presidential campaign and built a strong social media presence, bringing activism for the first time to many who had never been active before. Trump, a rich white guy that took advantage of women, and Hillary Clinton, the first woman presidential candidate nominated by a major political party, were opposites. While both women and men felt despair and urgency, women took the lead in this resistance. Pantsuit Nation, a rallying cry that established a social media presence early on in the Hillary campaign, took a central role in the women’s resistance against Trump’s ideology and became the fanbase identity of Hillary supporters.  Major social media groups promoted the slogan, and a secret group formed on Facebook called “Pantsuit Nation” with more than 3,000 members by Election Day. The Women’s March peaked the Trump resistance movement and spread the resistance throughout American society. Feminism was resurrected as a positive identity among women. As one marcher put it “Feminism is no longer a dirty word.” The presidential campaign with the first woman as a major presidential candidate in contrast to Trumps misogynist rhetoric kicked off a social diffusion that maximized the internet impact in rallying grassroots support for the Women’s March.  

The seed was planted for the Women’s March on election night by a Hawaiian woman named Teresa Shook. Devastated by the 2016 presidential election results, she wanted to demonstrate for women’s equality in response to Trump’s victory.  Her obstacles included limited resources, and she lived in Hawaii, on a small island in the middle of the Pacific far away from the women she wanted to reach. Her solution: Facebook. She posted a fictional event for the march she dreamed of because it made her feel better. By morning she received more than 10,000 responses.   Several factors set Shook’s Facebook event apart from others: it had a genuine motivation with a personal story attached, the timing was perfect, there was already a resist Trump presence on social media and women in particular were sharing their personal stories on platforms all over the internet.

Organizing momentum for a women’s march to resist Trump continued building fast on several social media platforms. Crimson Hexagon reported that up to 40 keywords and hashtags relating to the Women's March collected more than 200,000 unique social media mentions between December 20, 2016 and January 21, 2017. The number of groups on Facebook promoting the Women’s March on Washington continued to grow, and participants took to Instagram and Twitter using the hashtag #WhyIMarch to share their reasons for getting involved.  

Organizational Development
Early on the Women’s March was committed to dismantling systems of oppression through nonviolent resistance and building inclusive structures guided by self-determination, dignity and respect. The mission of Women’s March was and is to harness the political power of diverse women and their communities to create transformative social change. All of this sounds ideal, and it is, in creating the organization where a critical dialog on inclusion emerged between the organizers and other women on social media.  The Women’s March continues their ideals to be a women-led movement providing intersectional education on a diverse range of issues and creating entry points for new grassroots activists & organizers to engage in their local communities through trainings, outreach programs and events.

The Women’s March organizational structure is tough to describe without lengthy explanations because of the unconventional framework. Building the organizational process was and continues outside any formal, academic, or old school grassroots organizational model. The founding organizers come from diverse backgrounds in various areas of social justice and each has a unique contribution that led to the movement’s ability to accomplish a worldwide event that does not have precedents in current history. This process has created the ability to be inclusive in a way that has not been accomplished before. Inclusion philosophy that was spelled out in the four-page Guiding Vision and Definition of Principles states that "women have intersecting identities and are therefore impacted by a multitude of social justice and human rights issues."

The principle of diversity was reflected in the national committee that was made up of 50 women with overlapping responsibilities for fundraising, logistics, communications and arranging partnerships. This leadership created a decentralized structure; giving the March wide appeal, and diffused the partnership potential, all of which added to the organizations flexibility to respond to changing dynamics that contributed to the March’s success. The original location of the Women’s March was Washington, D.C., and the flexibility of the D.C. March’s organization facilitated the inclusion of solidarity sister marches organized by local activist worldwide, making the March a global effort. These local marches were organized by local people as autonomous marches, but with strong solidarity with the Women’s March in D.C. Local community organizations not only organized local marches but also helped coordinate transportation, housing and other logistics for their constituents to get to Washington, D.C.

Inclusion was one of the Women’s March strengths. The Unity Principles were the codification of #WhyIMarch. The hashtag that united marchers across social media was used by the ad-hoc committee of contributors, including writer Janet Mock and Kelley Robinson of Planned Parenthood in the four-page outline of marching orders, the Unity Principles. This document delineated exactly why people marched, bringing diverse issues into alignment. Unlike a conventional campaign’s unity principles, and other organizational development components that are written and approved by a small group of project managers that have done extensive research on what is needed, the Women’s March Unity Principles were written from social media posts and reflected the pulse of the “Base.”  This is a reflection of the grassroots organizational structure of the Women’s March and their priority that the masses came before the organization.

All of these ideals put into the organizational structure didn’t mean the march was beyond criticism. These ideals navigated a complicated web of issues ranging from reproductive rights to gun control and police brutality to climate justice, the diffusion on the intent wove together disparate, sometimes competing interests of the Women’s March into a cohesive whole. Intersectional feminist philosophy influenced the March’s organizers and was a driving force in the discourse of the Women’s March. Intersectional Feminist philosophy focuses on elevating marginalized women and asks white women to accept or check their privilege and beliefs. Even though all women are marginalized, Intersectional Feminists believe there are segments within the group of women that are further marginalized. This philosophy is strengthened in studies that show women of color and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) women are marginalized in ways that white women are not.

Social media facilitated discourse on Intersectional Feminist philosophy leading to an open, honest debate of the criticisms. Gloria Steinem, an honorary co-chair for the March had been criticized in the past for ignoring intersectional feminism, said during this discourse that conversations on race are important, and other March leaders agreed. For the most part criticisms were constructive. Linda Sarsour, a co-chairwoman for the Women’s March, said that the discussion on race, “…was an opportunity to take the conversation to the deep places.” The response by the Women’s March organizers, was to recruit more women of color to participate in the organization and planning process, including Hispanic activist Carmen Perez and gun control activist Tamika Mallory.

Consequences of taking inclusion too far was a pro-life group, the Texas-based New Wave Feminists, that was added, and then dropped, from the list of march sponsors following a story in The Atlantic. Groups listed among the march’s sponsors were organizations like Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America, but the March was not underwritten by any one group. Some criticized that all female gender identities were not included, which gave little visibility to different gender identities. A contentious Facebook post about white allies on the Women’s March page prompted a swift response from some white women who no longer felt welcomed at the event while stimulating important conversations about privilege and inclusion.

Organizing was not restricted to the national organization, and other groups started to build the momentum and projects promoting the march. One of those groups was the Pussyhat Project, which was cozy little hats that were knitted for women who marched. This movement was started by Krista Suh and Jayna Zweiman, the idea was for marchers to knit, sew, or crochet hats to create a visual statement of a "sea of pink.” Pussyhats started being knitted like crazy, local craft shops couldn’t keep them in stock and women knitted them for women they knew were going to Washington but couldn’t go themselves. Some even attached a message on why the knitter wanted to march. It was this kind of participation that brought people together, giving everyone the feeling that they had something to contribute.

The Day of the March
Marches took place in 50 states and 32 countries. Some of the cities included San Francisco, New York, Park City, Raleigh, Shreveport, Albuquerque, Paris, Accra, Vashon and Warsaw. The last count was 616 sister marches around the world.  Partici­pation in all march locations was es­timated to be over 4 million. In D.C. alone, participation was estimated to be about 1 million.  More than 7,378,442 social media mentions were documented by SpoutSocial the day of the March itself. In the end, it was “one of the most massive single-day protests in American and world his­tory” (Friedersdorf, 2017).
Carmen Perez, one of the four co-chairs of the Washington march, alongside Tamika D Mallory, Linda Sarsour and Bob Bland, pointed out that the protests were grounded in the non-violent ideology of the civil-rights movement. Extraordinarily, there wasn’t a single incident of violence at any of the marches worldwide. Women all came to the march with different pressing issues, and what that means is that the march looked beyond women’s issues alone and protest signs carried at the march reflected those messages. This graph by Crimson Hexagon sums up some of the top reasons women marched that were mentioned on social media.
 
Even though the reasons marchers march went beyond feminist ideals, the day of the march feminism had its comeback debut. Identifying as a feminist is voluntary and both men and women enter this identity and shed it depending on the social climate.  The day of the march feminism became a badge of honor again, no longer a dirty word. The collective sight of pink, crocheted, knitted or sewn "Pussyhats," made a visual statement on the streets.  Women wore these hats on the planes, trains, and buses on their way to D.C. and all over DC before and after the march, creating a strong sense of sisterhood. The Pussyhat became the symbol that summed up the sentiment of the day.

The Aftermath
Even though there was not a clear vision beyond the Women’s March during the organizing efforts, immediately following the Women’s March organizers held another rally and networking session officially labeling it “Where Do We Go from Here?”  The next day, Sunday, Planned Parenthood and other groups held a training session for 2,000 organizers on how to go from this grassroots mobilization event to political action. By the time marches got home there was a plan
for 10 actions in 100 days, calling for participants to channel the outrage expressed at the Women’s March and organize huddles in their communities. There were 5,642 huddles registered on the Women’s March website, which represented all 50 states to take up the 10 Actions in 100 Days campaign. This new campaign took the grassroots organizing to a whole new level of social movement accomplishments.

True to other social movements the Women’s March took extensive coordination with little accomplishment in the short term making it important to have a plan to follow up on their goals and harness the enthusiasm of the millions that marched.  The march’s original goals and agenda were full of grand ideas of political change and hope for the future, and created a network that could be mobilized. Other organizations benefited from this network created by the Women’s March.  Emily’s List, an organization that trains and supports women who want to run for office, had 900 women sign up to run for political office in 2016. By 2017, 16,000 women signed up. A newly formed group, Invisible,  had the same local group concept as the Women’s March 10 Actions in 100 Days, and spearheaded a similar campaign. Invisible’s guide to organizing in small groups went viral, being downloaded more than one million times and inspiring many, including marchers, to stay active. The Women’s March led to other marches including a tax march demanding that Trump release his taxes on 15 April 2017, the March for Science on 22 April, 2017, the People’s Climate March on 29 April 2017; and an Immigrant Support March on 6 May, 2017.

The accomplishments of the Women’s March go beyond inspirational. The 10 actions in 100 days kept the movement going into the future. The Women’s March received the PEN America award, for Freedom of Expression and Courage at the 2017 PEN Literary Gala. Nine months after the march, internet platforms set up to spread activism are still active and march organizers hosted a Women’s Convention with 4,000 attendees in October 2017. This convention was seen by the organizers as an extension of the march as well as a test of the movements ongoing relevance. The movement continues to touch women’s lives and promote unity in resistance to Trump. As time passes, academics, media studies and communication experts will reflect and discover new significance and impacts of the Women’s March as the evaluation of the campaign continues, developing giving ongoing relevance to the Women’s March that many are calling the beginning of the “Third Wave of Feminism.”