Editor’s note: This commentary is by Dede Cummings, who is a writer, book designer, agent, publisher and commentator for Vermont Public Radio. She is active in the environmental group 350-Vermont. She lives in West Brattleboro, where she runs a home office for the startup Green Writers Press.
In his final speech in Chicago, President Obama said, “We [have] become so secure in our bubbles …” Yes, Mr. President, that was me! I was so sure a woman would be in the White House.
Last week, I left my Vermont home with solar panels on a dirt road and farms on both sides, and took the train to Washington, D.C., for the Women’s March on Washington.
When I arrived, I rode the escalator up to historic Union Station. Trump supporters were walking around like they were on a break from a movie set. It was eerily quiet in the cavernous hall of the station. They were wearing red hats that said “Make America Great.”
Interspersed with the red caps, here and there, I saw flashes of pink from the hand-knitted “pussy hats” and immediately knew I had found my people and breathed a sigh of relief.
The next morning, as we emerged from the Metro station at 3rd Street, we filed onto escalators where the pink hats formed a giant chain. Suddenly, there was a roar that emerged from the bowels of the Metro and rose up through the escalators and out onto the street towards Independence Avenue.
The pussy hat women had arrived.
A black woman police officer waved us across Independence, saying over and over, “You are welcome here. You are welcome here.” It was a surprise to see the Capitol dome straight ahead of us.
We formed the first of many group phalanxes that moved throughout the day, the surge of the crowd numbers in Washington and all the major cities in the U.S. along with over 300 countries worldwide, surpassing all the estimates.
And the speeches, the rap music I heard, the passion and the good-natured conversations I participated in, all served to help me break through my own bubble. But it was a new, bigger bubble. My sisters were marching in Montpelier, too!
President Trump is our gift to remind us that democracy requires active participation.
A bubble that wasn’t going to pop, in fact, it was a pink-pussy-hat-colored bubble, emboldened with power. With slogans like: “Keep your little hands off my uterus,” “Love Trumps Hate,” “Feminism not Fascism,” and one of my personal favorites, “We are the granddaughters of the witches you weren’t able to burn!”
“We must put our bodies where our beliefs are,” Gloria Steinem said to the crowd.
On the train home, I met a sixth-to-eighth grade teacher from Connecticut named Joy. We started talking and I asked her what was going to motivate her now.
She said the most powerful chant was: “This is what democracy looks like.” She thinks we have forgotten that.
We’ve gotten complacent, I agreed.
President Trump is our gift to remind us that democracy requires active participation. I told her about my bubble that was burst, my desire to work even harder in this newfound burgeoning community of women’s marchers, champions of human rights, all over the world.
