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.”
