The Biggest March the World has ever seen

Yesterday on Saturday, January 21, 2017, the biggest protest and affirmation March the world has ever seen took place in major cities in every country of Western Civilization from Australia through Europe and in the major cities of the USA.  In Philadelphia, two of my best friends marched, with a crowd that defied belief.  My daughter marched in New York City.

All day I watched on CNN.  It was astonishing to me that a half inch of snow can call out helicopters and reporters in parkas on CBS, and NBC, but streets filled with a human ocean is ignored.  However, BBC and CNN covered it, in particular CNN did a good job.  

Another astonishing thing was that it was Peaceful!  That many people marching in every city and it was peaceful.  It was a world history event.  

I wish I could have been part of it.  I actually cried briefly at having to be left out.  Three friends called me to ask if I wanted to go, but my bad knees and deteriorating spine make standing on concrete for so many hours impossible.  I did my marching - to end the war in Vietnam, for Women's Rights, Civil Rights, LGBTQ rights, and Abortion Choice, from the 1960's to the 1990's.  Now I am retired for real.  

However, that said, I am going to a film screening today at Moorestown Friends Meeting at 2:00.  The film is "Equality Means Equality!"  It is open to the public and $10 a person, with books available for sale.  I am going with an old marching buddy with whom I went to junior high and high school, and with whom I marched in the past.  

PROFILE:  Chris Borget, formerly known as Chris Gilbreath, was not only a high achiever in high school, but also a diligent and accomplished college student at what was then named Beaver College, now called Arcadia, in Pa.  She became a teacher and was one of the founding members of the group that put their own homes up as equity to borrow a mortgage to buy the homestead of Alice Paul, the great Suffrage Leader and turn it into a learning center Paulsdale Institute in Mount Laurel on Hooten Road.  It is a great place to visit for Women's History, Human civil rights history, New Jersey History, Quaker History, and Suffrage history.  Chris and I were both members of NOW, and she probably still is!

Just now I am going to the convenience stores to buy the newspaper to read about the March.  It has given me hope that things are not as bad as I had feared and that we are going forward after all, not backward into bigotry, capitalist exploitation, and ignorance.

I still believe that a great motivating force behind a nincompoop like Trump defeating an intelligent and experienced woman like Hillary Clinton, was gender bias.  I think the reason the e-mail fiasco got the attention it did when so many more egregious crimes had been perpetrated by Trump such as income tax evasion in the millions of dollars was the e-mail sounds like female.  Also, racial bias.  I believe a lot of the anti-Obama sentiment was based on race because statistics show that despite being hobbled by the Republicans in the Senate and Congress, on almost every  measurable front, Obama made progress - in reduced unemployment, providing health care, making peace in the world (Cuba), and scaling back nuclear weapons proliferation (Iran) and he was working towards progress in cutting back the pollutants contributing to global warming.  All the things that Trump now wishes to scale back (since in his opinion global warming and climate change are a Chinese Hoax).  God Help US!

Anyhow, enough of that - the Topic was a Million Women Peacefully Marching to show strength and hope and unity!  What a day!