On the national level, Bland brought in an experienced
and diverse group of activists and organizers to take the lead
on the national march: Tamika Mallory, an African-American
gun-control activist; Linda Sarsour, the Muslim-American
executive director of the Arab American Association of New
York; and Carmen Perez, the Mexican-American head of
The Gathering for Justice, a criminal-justice-reform group.
More sister marches sprang up across the country and
then across the world. “It’s what got me out of bed,”
Barnhart says. “I started volunteering two days after the
election.”
Barnhart works with nonprofit groups and is an adjunct
instructor at the University of Oregon, teaching online
classes to AmeriCorps members.
Barnhart says that about 1,500 people from Oregon alone
are expected to travel to the march in Washington D.C. And
Oregon itself has sister marches planned for Ashland,
Astoria, Bend, Coos Bay, Eugene, Florence, Newport,
Portland and Salem.
Like the original national group, the state organizers were
mainly white women. So Barnhart says she made it a point
to reach out to women of color and LGBTQIA people, she
says, and get them involved. She contacted organizations
that served specific audiences and asked them to get the
word out.
AND THAT IS WHERE INTERSECTIONALITY COMES IN. Barnhart
says that for many marchers, “coming to this march, this is
the first political action they've ever taken.” Barnhart says
her goal is try to get great tools and resources into their
hands and help them to be “stronger allies, learners and
listeners going forward.”
Shortly after Barnhart offered to be an Oregon admin,
Eugene resident, SLUG queen and mother of two Constance
Van Flandern offered to organize as well, and she too
became a state admin helping bring people to Washington,
drawing on her experiences dating back to her childhood in
D.C. and her mother’s involvement with the National
Organization for Women (NOW).
Van Flandern remembers growing up in an era where
daughters were told, “you are equal” but where women were
not truly viewed as equal. She points to a national failure to
ratify the Equal Rights Amendment as a part of that
inequality.
The ERA, which would have amended the Constitution
to guarantee equal rights for women, was passed by
Congress in 1972 but not ratified by the states. “People seem
to forget that the ERA was never ratified,” Van Flandern
says. If and when the ERA is ratified she says, then that’s
legal recourse for when women are not given equal human
rights.
Women are still passed over for jobs and objectified, Van
Flandern says. “Why?” she asks. “As a group — though not
every individual — we are physically less powerful. So we
are to be dominated?”
Eisinger, who is of Van Flandern’s mother’s generation,
remembers being told that same “you can be anything you
want” thing and says she sees today’s young women
believing “that kind of lie.”
She says, “Well we can vote, I can get a job, we are
working on equal pay.” But many young women “don’t
realize how insidious the whole inequality of women is.”
Eisinger’s family expected her brother to go to college
but not her. She finally put herself through school at the UO
at age 37 and became a teacher. In the early ’80s she
remembers participating in a teachers’ strike and another
teacher saying to her, “I like what I do; I think the pay is
OK.”
Eisinger told her, “This isn’t for us; this is for the people
who come after.”
She says, “I didn’t want to strike either. I didn’t want to
be out on the picket line. I wanted to be in the classroom, but
there are sacrifices you have to do to advance society as a
whole.”
A bird lover, Eisinger didn’t participate in any protests
until the Malheur occupation last year. That weeks-long
drama drew her out, she says, as birds and the Malheur
National Wildlife Refuge are very close to her, emotionally.
Now Eisinger will march again, with her granddaughter at
her side, because, she says, “men are still in control of
women’s bodies.”
BRINGING TOGETHER THE DIFFERENT GENERATIONS AND
TYPES OF FEMINISTS and creating inclusivity is a key
challenge of the march. A member of an older generation of
feminists may see the suffragettes as heroes and want to
march in white, wearing banners, but they will march side-
by-side with a newer wave of feminists who argue
suffragettes put their rights ahead of those of people of color
and that early women voters used their enfranchisement to
bring racists into power.
Van Flandern explains that as the march strives to be
intersectional and diverse, it also strives to give marchers
the understanding and abilities to be better allies and
listeners.
Howe doesn’t see herself as one of the groups who
doesn’t have a voice. A blogger for the Huffington Post and
writer for local publications, including EW, she says, “As
transgender, I don’t feel left out of the media, ever.” She
laughs, “I went from being a boring white guy to trendy.”
And Howe, also a former teacher, explains how she sees
the effort to bring diverse voices to the march. She
compares it to a classroom in which there are extroverts
who are used to talking all the time as well as groups of kids
who need to be drawn out. “You can say, ‘I want you to
speak up,’” she says. “But after centuries of being told to be
silent, just saying, ‘I’d like you to speak up,’ isn’t enough.”
Also, Van Flandern and Howe agree, when someone
speaks up and criticizes the status quo, even well-meaning
activists can feel threatened. Howe says, “I want you to feel
like you can say what you have to say, even if I feel
threatened by it.”
Van Flandern adds, “It’s a messy grassroots process,”
because after all, Democracy is messy.
The march is open to not just women but those who
believe in and support the rights and humanity of women
and girls, organizers say. It seeks to be a march made up of
self-identified women and girls, people of color, immigrants,
members of the LGBTQIA community, people with
disabilities and self-identified men and boys.
A Jan. 2 article in The Week proclaims, “Why the
Women's March on Washington has already failed,” and
calls it a “a feel-good exercise in search of a cause.” The
article questions not whether many people will show up,
“but whether they have the seriousness of purpose to be
taken seriously.”
At last count, more than 150,000 people have said they
are going to the D.C. march alone, and countless people
like Eisinger will participate in sister marches.
Van Flandern and her co-admins recognize the criticisms
but don’t flinch from them. “I’m glad people read it,” she
says of the article, “I completely disagree.” She says the
point of the Women’s March on Washington isn’t just the
march itself but the tools and community that are being
created as a result.
“When the shit hits the fan,” Van Flandern says, “we will
be reaching out to the community locally and across the
nation.”
Howe adds, “We have the mother of all mailing lists.”
A policy platform is being discussed at the national
level, Barnhart says, and the Women’s March is looking at
what it can do beyond Jan. 21.
“I HAVE A POSTER BOARD AND I’VE BEEN THINKING AND
THINKING of what to put on it,” Eisinger says. “I want to be
broader than just anti-Trump. Something like, ‘this is not
normal or never normal.’”
Women don’t really have the respect men have, she says.
“By and large it’s a man’s religion, and it’s a man’s business
world and you can break that glass ceiling only if you are
allowed to by a man.”
Reflecting upon Trump’s “grab them by the pussy,”
comment, Eisinger says “a lot of men were appalled by it,
and wouldn’t say it themselves, but maybe think we are
making too much of it.” But, she says, “it shows the deepest
disrespect.”
She adds, “It could be so much better and should be.”
The Eugene march starts at noon Jan. 21 at the U.S. Federal Courthouse, 405
East 8th Avenue. The national Women’s March on Washington starts gathering at
10 am Jan. 21 at the intersection of Independence Avenue and Third Street
southwest, near the U.S. Capitol. To get involved with the local effort, go to
Women’s March in Eugene page on Facebook and for national and state
information, go to womensmarch.com.
DON’T
GRAB MY
PUSSYHAT
A
s the preparation gets under way
for the Women’s March on
Washington and its sister
marches, sign making and T-shirt
preparations have taken off. One notable
bit of fashion is the Pussyhat Project,
which seeks to outfit marchers with
more or less matching pink pussyhats to
“make a unique collective visual
statement, which will help activists be
better heard. The hats are being created
by crafters across the country and
consist of a pink knit cap with small cat
ears. For more go to pussyhatproject.
com.
For those lacking the crafty gene,
Threadbare Print House, a Eugene-
based woman owned, eco-friendly
company, is producing T-shirts with a
fist and the slogan “fiercely feminist.”
Threadbare owner Amy Baker says,
“Most of us from the shop will be
marching in Portland that weekend. We
have several friends and customers who
are flying to D.C. for the March.” Baker
says that $10 from every T-shirt and
$20 from every hoodie sold will be
donated to Planned Parenthood.
“Planned Parenthood seemed like the
right place to donate the money to
because it is an institution that provides
necessary health care to women across
the country,” she says. To purchase go
to threadbarepress.com.
eugeneweekly.com • January 12, 2017
13