Page 10A
NATION
East Oregonian
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Preparing to march on Portland
Behind the scenes, the Women’s March on Portland wrestles with issues of race, feminism, leadership
new administrators, changing
the graphics to match the other
page.
Sandy said she asked for
help because the unusually
snowy weather was making
it tough to get to Portland,
not because she was worried
about the opposition. She
declined to speak further about
the conflict.
“If people want to lie
about it or whatever, we all
know what happened,” she
said, “and I know they all feel
strongly about it and I hope
it’s a successful march, done
safely and peacefully and
nonviolently.”
Jacobsen does feel strongly
about it.
“I think I’m just happy
now that people feel safe
attending,” they said. “Safety
of like: Are there cops there
to protect me? Am I safe there
as this woman even though I
don’t look like you?”
Who is included now?
Van Flandern said the
weekend after they took
over the original page and
unblocked everyone, thou-
sands more people said they
would attend the march while
only two dozen have been so
put off by the discussions to
say they won’t come.
“I think that the Portland
march right now is a beautiful
example of growth,” she said.
“They’ve become a leader for
other sister marches to look up
to.”
For example, Jacobsen,
who is able-bodied, is advo-
cating for accommodations
for people with disabilities to
attend the march.
This was something the
current organizers felt Sandy
and her friends weren’t doing.
“There was part of me that
was so angry at her and part of
me that was so sympathetic,”
Van Flandern said. “She had
all these great intentions. She
didn’t mean to hurt anyone.
It’s a really good example of
(what happens when) your
intentions and your actions,
they don’t align.”
By SHASTA KEARNS
MOORE
Portland Tribune
If Saturday’s Women’s
March on Portland draws
the expected 30,000 or more
participants, it could be the
biggest demonstration the city
has ever seen.
And it almost didn’t
happen.
The real story behind the
march isn’t completely known
even to its lead organizer, but
in many ways it is a familiar
one.
The march is a reaction to
the election of Donald Trump,
and nearly all of the forces at
work to upset politics in the
2016 presidential race were
also in play in organizing the
Portland march: social media,
race, gender, the urban-rural
divide, generational concepts
of feminism and, most of all,
lots of people feeling like they
weren’t being heard.
Like so many stories in our
modern American discourse,
how you see it depends on
where you are standing.
Unlike many of the stories
in our modern American
discourse, the main players
are calling for unity despite
their sense of betrayal.
Fractures appear
It all began on Nov. 11, the
Friday after Trump’s election.
Four friends from Eastern
Oregon wanted to join the
national movement to march
after Trump’s inauguration
but didn’t see anyone stepping
forward in Oregon.
“Why did we do it?
Because nobody else was,”
says one of the women. The
former lead organizer does not
want her name or hometown
used because she works for the
federal government and fears
retaliation, so the Tribune will
call her Sandy.
“Eastern Oregon is pretty
much white and mostly red,”
Sandy said, alluding to skin
color and the Republican
party. “People of color feel
unsafe in Portland; well,
people of left-leaning politics
are not safe in rural Oregon.”
Sandy and her friends
wanted a big march for all of
the women of Oregon, so she
opened up a Facebook page
announcing a march on Port-
land. She watched it explode
— thousands of people saying
they would come in a matter
of days.
They got to work on
fundraising, permitting and all
of the myriad organizational
tasks for an event this large.
But
fractures
soon
appeared.
People started pushing for
their specific issue to be repre-
sented; others pushed back.
Sandy grew frustrated.
The march, she said,
was supposed to be about
“women’s rights.” To her,
“it didn’t matter what color
you were, who you identified
with. It was about the bigger
picture.”
Sandy had organized
about 600 volunteers through
a Facebook group — anyone
who offered to do something
was immediately deputized,
she said.
The online relationships
meant organizers didn’t see
anything but each other’s
Renee Jones Schneider/Star Tribune via AP
Women ride a bus to Washington for the Women’s March, Friday in Minneapolis, Minn.
profile pictures. Asked if there
were any people of color in
leadership positions, Sandy
responded:
“I think so. I’m trying to
think,” she paused. “Because
we didn’t pay attention. I
know they were asked. It’s
not our fault if they say ‘no’ or
don’t respond.”
Sandy said she had lined
up a woman to speak about
transwomen’s rights and was
changing the march to provide
a safe way for Black Lives
Matter to be able to stage a
“die-in.”
She said they were trying
to make black people and their
allies feel welcome.
But the online chatter
intensified.
In November moderators
began deleting comments
— which would often delete
entire threads of conversation
— and blocked contrarian
commenters. That made
people angrier.
“Just because one person
does not have the issues that
you have, does not mean that
you should demean them and
that the issues that they have
are not important, and sadly
we have seen a lot of that
going on,” she said.
Sandy said moderators
were deleting only personal
attacks.
But that wasn’t how it felt
to Constance Van Flandern,
an artist and activist in Eugene
who is the state’s official
liaison to the national Women’s
March on Washington.
“These women were over-
whelmed by people coming
to their Facebook page and
asking about issues of diver-
sity,” Van Flandern said. “It
was just delete, delete, delete.”
Van Flandern says people
were getting blocked in
droves. Spies started infil-
trating the site, reporting
back to those who had been
blocked.
Counter-protests
were announced.
“It was getting to be crazy.
Just crazy,” Van Flandern said.
Major allies such as
Planned Parenthood and the
NAACP Portland chapter
decided they wouldn’t partic-
ipate. The march was falling
apart.
Women’s lib
“Portland’s been hijacked,”
Van Flandern kept thinking.
She was losing sleep over what
she saw as the almost-certain
likelihood of chaos and divi-
sion. “This is such a terrible
wasted opportunity. It’s going
to be this horrible march about
how we can’t get our shit
together.”
Van Flandern reached out
to the national organization
to ask for help resolving the
conflict, but she said she was
told: “We’d love to, but this
scenario is playing out in
places all over the nation.”
Indeed, a Jan. 9 New York
Times article detailed how
divisions over privilege are
sparking these conversations
and frustrations in marches all
across the country, including
the national march.
The conflict lies in how
different generations view
feminism.
In the 1960s, the women’s
liberation movement pushed
concerns such as equal places
for women in the workplace.
In the newer version,
called “intersectional femi-
nism,” women are expected
to recognize the advantages
and privileges they have
and proactively use those to
elevate the concerns of those
less fortunate. Believers of
intersectional feminism view
the old way as “white femi-
nism” because it stopped short
of liberating women of color,
who remain even less advan-
taged than white women in
equal pay, reproductive rights
and other measurements that
the largely white, middle-class
baby boomer feminists didn’t
consider.
A hostile takeover
It wasn’t until Dec. 27 that
Van Flandern realized she
could stage a hostile takeover
of the Facebook page.
She started a new one,
called Women’s March on
Washington: Portland, and
invited nine women who had
been complaining to her about
the lack of inclusion on the
other page.
“At the very least, that can
be the page for the voice of
Portland and at least Portland
can talk to each other,” she
said.
The women invited their
friends and within hours they
had 1,000 people on the page,
Van Flandern said.
“At that point, I started
seeing (Sandy)’s site as the
Death Star,” Van Flandern
said, making a Star Wars refer-
ence. “We’re like the rebels.”
Their
one-in-a-million
X-wing Starfighter shot?
Margaret
Jacobsen,
a compelling writer and
photographer with a large
social media presence on
issues such as parenting while
black, being a victim of sexual
violence and living as a nonbi-
nary gender polyamorist.
“This woman is a natural
leader,” Van Flandern said.
“She’s strong without being
aggressive. She’s like a
genius.”
Jacobsen
(who
uses
gender-neutral
pronouns)
joined the new movement
Jan. 4. Soon after, they were
stunned to learn what was
going on with the leadership
struggle. Jacobsen wrote a
post that went viral and people
started messaging Sandy’s
page and getting blocked,
according to Van Flandern.
Sandy reached out to Van
Flandern the evening of Jan. 5
to ask for help in leading the
march.
“I was sort of watching
her on the one hand spinning
out, and on the other watching
people get so excited,” Van
Flandern said.
Van Flandern agreed and
quickly took over the Eastern
Oregon women’s page with
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