Thousands Walk in Women’s March Bay Area

Posted on January 22, 2017 Lauren Riley

Yesterday, 616 Women’s Marches organized in peaceful protest across 58 countries. More than a million women, men, and children showed their solidarity in support of human rights and social justice worldwide.

And it all starting with one woman.

On election night in November, Hawaii resident Teresa Shook reached out to her friends with an idea: let’s march in the capital. That lead to a Facebook post that received 12,000 hits overnight, reaching 150,000 the day after that. Once Shook realized that the call to action was louder than she could’ve imagined, she connected with professional organizers for help.

It was only 4 days after the initial post that word reached Martha, a Women’s March Bay Area organizer. Along with friends and other organizers, Martha considered the best plan of action. The initial idea was to host one massive event to garner the most media attention. But this march was about the people and communities that tend to be most affected: the Muslim community, undocumented immigrants, minority groups, people of color, along with women as a whole. In the end, it was decided it was more important to make it easy for protestors to participate easily, and 3 marches were planned in Oakland, San Jose, and San Francisco.

The radical out pour of attendance that followed in the Bay Area was only a microcosm of what could be the largest one-day protest in American history.

An estimated 60,000–100,000 people gathered in Oakland, along with over 75,000 more in San Jose and San Francisco. Families, friends, and neighbors walked alongside groups representing Planned Parenthood, the Affordable Care Act, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Black Lives Matter, and more. Celebrities at the rallies like Joan Baez, who led a Spanish rendition of “We Shall Not Be Moved” in San Francisco, were only supporting characters compared to the thousands of Bay Area residents who stood together.

The BART ride back from the Oakland march summarized what we’d seen that day. Children stood with their parents and held bright pink signs saying “My Rights Too”, energized by their participation in something they’re only beginning to attempt to understand. Young men spoke with women in pink cat ear hats (a reference to comments made by Donald Trump about women’s anatomy) about their disbelief at certain pages being removed from the White House website (namely, pages or mentions of LGBT communities, environmental policies, and civil rights initiatives). Women who marched with canes joked about missing their stop because they were too engaged in conversation with strangers. Amidst everything, rather than an angry, emboldened “protest”, it felt more like, well…a celebration.

And as the vastness and weight of yesterday’s events sets in, some might be left wondering if marches like these and the positivity they sparked would have been possible without the current political climate. Would the same conversations be had? Would children be prompted to ask the same questions? Would communities take action in the ways they have already?

Whatever the answer may be, we know we wouldn’t be graced by these kick-ass signs on our social media feeds, and that really would have been a loss:

If you’d like to get more involved and are looking for a place to start, check out the Women’s March 10 Actions/100 Days campaign.

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