Hint: a lot of different things
“What are they doing out there?” “What do they want?” “What’s their goal?”
If there’s a protest or demonstration, you can count on an observer asking these questions from the sidelines. And, to be fair, the answer is less than obvious when tens of thousands of diverse people have gathered, with signs, chants, and group memberships that cover a wide range of issues.
That’s already been the case for Women’s March on Washington taking place in Washington, DC, on Saturday. It’s been projected that this event could draw more attendees than Donald Trump’s Friday inauguration and has inspired satellite marches taking place across the country and around the world.
On Friday, planeloads of women, many toting signs or wearing “pussy hats” (meant to recall — and reclaim — the infamous x-rated reference in Trump’s videotaped brag about being able to grab women by their genitals without their consent) flooded into the nation’s capitol in preparation for the festivities.
The mainstream understanding of the event is that it’s a protest against Trump. And the women participating have plenty to complain about — from his admitted sexual misconduct, to the many sexual assault allegations against him that he’s denied, to the serious threats to women’s health and reproductive rights that experts expect based on his threatened defunding of Planned Parenthood and appointment of conservative Supreme Court justices.
But organizers say something slightly different: they created the event to send an affirmative message that “women’s rights are human rights.” That’s why they call it a “march” or a “rally” instead of a protest. Perhaps that’s splitting hairs, but it’s undeniable that a lot more thought than “Trump is bad” went into the planning — and that characterizing it only as a protest against him somewhat flattens the message that many participants hope to send. Here’s what you need to know to understand why organizers created the march and why so many women (and men) will be there.
There’s no guesswork about the goals: the Women’s March has an official platform
The simple, official answer to “What do they want?” is easy to find in the first paragraph of the March’s official policy platform, a four-page document titled “Guiding Vision and Defining Principals” that was released in advance of the event. Noting that it aims to bring together people of all genders and backgrounds, the organizers proclaim that it’s goal is “to affirm our shared humanity and pronounce our bold message of resistance and self-determination.”
What that means, exactly, is further illuminated by the rest of the lengthy statement of principals included in the platform. It’s much broader and more aspirational than the simple lists of demands that accompany some protests and includes many things (freedom from sexual violence, for example) that could not be realistically achieved right away, even by a progressive, feminist administration.
While many of the points are aspirational, many others are accompanied by incremental goals and specific actions that would be necessary to achieve them. Among other things, the march’s statement of principles calls for:
“Accountability and justice for police brutality” and “[dismantling] the gender and racial inequities within the criminal justice system”
Freedom from sexual violence
Ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee equal protection based on gender
Affirming that all domestic and caretaking work is work, even if unpaid; and that women — especially women of color — bear the brunt of that burden
“The right to organize and fight for a living minimum wage” for all workers, labor protections for undocumented and migrant workers, and “solidarity with sex workers’ rights movements”
Comprehensive reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, and immigrant and refugee rights
In terms of symbolic goals, organizers also announced the event as a tribute to people living and dead, who they recognized as having fought for the freedom of women. The women are: Bella Abzug, Corazon Aquino, Ella Baker Grace Lee Boggs, Berta Cáceres, Rachel Carson, Shirley Chisholm, Angela Davis, Miss Major Griffin Gracy, LaDonna Harris, Dorothy I. Height, bell hooks, Dolores Huerta, Marsha P. Johnson, Barbara Jordan, Yuri Kochiyama, Winona LaDuke, Audre Lorde, Wilma Mankiller, Diane Nash, Sylvia Rivera, Barbara Smith, Gloria Steinem, Hannah G. Solomon, Harriet Tubman, Edith Windsor, Malala Yousafzai.
No surprise: the tens of thousands of women participating won’t create a feminist mind meld — their priorities and beliefs vary
It goes without saying that not all of the people attending the march want the very same things that the women who wrote the platform have articulated as their priorities. While it’s safe to guess many of the people who show up in DC Saturday would enthusiastically sign off on the entire platform, there are surely others who care primarily about one or two of its elements, others who disagree with some, and others who haven’t seen it and simply feel moved to gather with other women in a very general demand for respect.
But it’s safe to say that nearly all of them demonstrate support for women’s rights — however they define them — in a way that provides a contrast to the attitudes expressed by Donald Trump and the policies that are expected from his administration.
As Emily Crockett has written for Vox, changes over the language in the platform in recent weeks highlighted that not everyone who might be motivated to participate in a movement for “women’s rights” thinks about, prioritizes, or describes these rights the same way. She reported just last week on tweaks to the platform and list of participants that reflect this diversity:
Given that groups like NARAL and Planned Parenthood are sponsoring the march, it’s not surprising that the platform calls for “Reproductive Freedom” — defined in part as “open access to safe, legal, affordable abortion and birth control for all people, regardless of income, location or education.”
But some pro-life women were just as disgusted by Trump’s comments as pro-choice women, as Emma Green reported for the Atlantic — and some of them are struggling to find their place in the Women’s March. Some pro-life women plan to join the explicitly pro-choice march because they agree with its other principles; others plan to actively protest the march’s pro-choice message.
One pro-life group, New Wave Feminists, was actually listed as a partner organization in the march for a while. But after the group’s inclusion was noticed by abortion rights supporters and caused controversy, organizers removed New Wave Feminists from the list of partners and said the group’s inclusion had been an error.
It’s a reminder that not everyone who self-identifies as “feminist” supports legal abortion — and that many abortion rights supporters see the term “pro-life feminist” as an oxymoron, since outlawing abortion tends to seriously hurt women’s health and limit their autonomy.
The language about solidarity with sex workers was also changed twice on Tuesday — which exposed another feminist rift and caused some brief controversy.
First, the phrase “sex workers’ rights movements” was deleted and replaced with “all those exploited for sex and labor.” Many advocates for sex workers objected to that change, since it could be read as a suggestion that all sex workers are inherently or equally “exploited.”
Those are great examples of the many things that can potentially divide people who generally want to march for women’s rights. And there are debates, too, like one over the the fact that Hillary Clinton isn’t included among the list of honorees. While some of them have been resolved, total agreement in a group as large and diverse as the one that’s expected would be unreasonable to expect.
One clear goal is to create a feminist movement that includes women of all backgrounds together
Much of the discussion around the march has centered around whether it lives up to the ideal of intersectionality. As Brittney Cooper, an assistant professor of women’s and gender studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University, explained, “Intersectionality simply means that there are lots of different parts to our womanhood ... and those parts — race, gender, sexuality, and religion, and ability — are not incidental or auxiliary. They matter politically.”
As Crockett has reported, all of the original organizers of the march were white, which caused concern about whether the march would take the concerns of women of color into account. After that, though, three prominent women of color who are experienced activists and organizers joined Bob Bland, one of the first women to organize the march on social media, as national co-chairs of the event: Tamika D. Mallory, Carmen Perez, and Linda Sarsour. Together, the three led a march from New York City to Washington, DC, in 2015 to demand changes in America’s criminal justice system.
The official platform of the Women’s March places the demonstration in the context of not only suffragists and abolitionists but the civil right movement, the American Indian movement, and Black Lives Matter. Just two paragraphs into the four-page document, organizers note that “women have intersecting identities and are therefore impacted by a multitude of social justice and human rights issues.” Examples of this, including the especially urgent need for equal pay among women of color and the way they’re uniquely victimized by the criminal justice system, follow in the rest of the platform.
Some women reportedly dropped out of the march because they weren’t comfortable with the conversation around this topic on the march’s Facebook page, but it’s a sign of the organizers’ commitment to inclusiveness that they shrugged off these concerns.
“This was an opportunity to take the conversation to the deep places,” said Linda Sarsour, a Muslim who heads the Arab American Association of New York and one of four co-chairs of the national march, told the New York Times. “Sometimes you are going to upset people.”
“If your short-term goal is to get as many people as possible at the march, maybe you don’t want to alienate people,” Anne Valk, the author of Radical Sisters, said in the same article. “But if your longer-term goal is to use the march as a catalyst for progressive social and political change, then that has to include thinking about race and class privilege.”
The event is more than a protest against Trump
The platform doesn’t even mention the new president’s name. Still, as Crockett, has written, the connection to his win — and the apparent validation of the things he stands for — is clear:
Many women were dismayed or even horrified that America chose Trump — an alleged sexual predator whose policies could be a huge setback for women’s health and rights — over Clinton, a highly qualified public servant who could have been America’s first woman president.
This gender dynamic has become such a powerful motivator that the Women’s March will probably become the largest Inauguration Weekend gathering of people who oppose Trump.
There’s good reason to believe that negative reactions to his “grab ‘em by the pussy” remarks specifically fueled some of the energy behind this march. That’s especially true when you consider the results of a post-election survey by PerryUndem, a nonpartisan public opinion research firm, on general attitudes about gender equality and how Americans felt about specific gender issues surrounding the 2016 election. The results indicate that many Americans may have been motivated specifically by leaked tapes to become politically active in support of women’s rights — and clearly, the March provides an opportunity to do just that. Crockett explained:
One of the poll’s many striking findings is this: While it may not have lost Trump the election in the end, the leaked 2005 Access Hollywood tape that featured Trump bragging about his ability to sexually assault women — specifically, that he could “grab [women] by the pussy,” kiss them without consent, and do whatever he wanted to them because he’s a star — had a major impact on many Americans, and hasn’t been forgotten.
Most Americans surveyed, 83 percent, remembered hearing about the tape. Almost all of those surveyed (91 percent) said they found Trump’s comments “unacceptable,” and most (61 percent overall, 66 percent of women, and 55 percent of men) said they felt “upset” by the comments...
Being “upset” about the Trump tape was the most reliable predictor of how likely someone was to take political action as a direct result of Trump’s election. The second most reliable predictor of taking political action was the belief that the country would be better off with more women in political office.
No other factors, including party affiliation, were significantly correlated with taking political action. Even after ruling out how people felt about Trump’s comments on that tape, a respondent’s general feelings about Trump, whether favorable or not, didn’t correlate with political action either.
That’s why you’ll see pink knitted “pussy hats” and plenty of anti-Trump signage Saturday. But the answer to “What do they want?” is bigger than “To get together and say the president is bad.”
The larger goal seems to be to harness the energy around this particular moment to launch a robust, feminist activist community to fight the gender inequality and assaults on women’s rights and dignity — which of course, existed long before Donald Trump came to power.