Using Our Feet When Our Voices Aren’t Enough #MillionWomanMarch

Growing up, often our Mommie made comments to the effect of, ‘If you want something done, leave it to a woman!” How often have you heard women referred to as the wind beneath someone’s wings, or seen an athlete shout to a camera, in the midst of victory, “Hi, Mom!” Or ‘Thank you, Mom!” or the phrase, “All that I am, and all that I hope to be, I owe to my mother”.

Women, through the ages, have born the weights of the world, sustained families through the wages of war, fought alongside men, living the truest sense of “only women bleed”.

Now, The MillionWomanMarch is unifying women into action across the globe standing – and marching – in support of women’s rights. Marches are occurring in 50 states in the USA, and some men are attending in support of women and liberties they love. Why the outcry? Civil marches express an abiding belief that our systems of government can work, even when they are felt not to.

Marches have been present to much of what has mattered in my life. The March on Washington and many local marches for civil rights, women’s marches in England and the USA supporting women’s rights to vote, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr led marches seeking civil freedoms. The Million Man March, Black Lives Matter, and now the #MillionWomanMarch all exercise legal rights as measures to seek full justice. As a child, I saw pictures of Jesus Christ marching with the burden of a cross on his back, soldiers marching to Vietnam and televised occurrences of dogs and hoses unleashed onto civil rights marchers of unified races, gender, economic standing and faiths, throughout the south. Yes, there were nuns.

Marches express, always, civilized outcry when our voices aren’t felt to be enough. They may be military in purpose, but civil and worker’s rights marches are our citizen efforts to anchor or argue our votes. The timing of marches can be critical, if they are to create change; yet, they often follow the reality of group pain. The truth about marches is that they are not always anti; rather, they are pro cause. Tones and issues may differ but the causes are collective in unity. This truth was often blurred when recent Black Lives Matter marches occurred in the USA. And, as the #MillionWomanMarch does cry out against mistreatment of women, it is fundamentally voices supporting women manifesting civil and constitutional rights.

The issues of gender, and gender fairness, intersect all modern populations, political parties and ages. Twenty years ago, local black women held a Million Woman March in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Today, more than ever, until the least of us know freedom, none of us may rest in it.