Marching - On and On

That's my mother and Ian's best friend Sh

The ladyfriend and I made the trek to DC to participate in the Women's March.  As both my parents and our son live there, it was an easy trip to make (and no outrageous hotel costs to bear).  I knit five Pussy Hats with Manos Del Uruguay yarn, which felt so right as it benefits women in rural Uruguay. It was great seeing women in the hats at the rest areas along the way. 

We were a little concerned about crossing the border, having heard about Canadians and other foreign nationals being turned away at the crossing near Montreal, QC; however, we still carry American passports and decided not to pretend we were going somewhere else.

At the border, the conversation went a little bit like this:
Border guard:  Where are you headed?
Me:  Washington, DC
Border guard:  What's there?
Me:  My parents live there, and we thought we'd check out the march. (For some reason I thought "checking out a march" sounded reasonable; it was better than "I thought we'd take part in a revolution.")
Border guard asks a few standard questions - are you bringing anything in, and so forth.  Then he just looks at us, hands us back our passports, and lets us go.  Whew!

I have to say, when we came back to Canada, the Canadian border guard asked us how the march was and whether there'd been any problems.  He seemed quite interested, and not in a negative way.  Oh, Canada!

The march was fantastic.  By all accounts it was one of the largest rally/march in recent history.  I've been to a lot of marches in DC, going all the way back to the anti-apartheid marches in the '80s.  I went to the anti-Strategic Defense Initiative (aka Star Wars) rally in '84 or '85 (I shared a cab with Amy Carter while in DC - hah!), pro-choice rallies galore, and of course many Amnesty International marches and demos. 

Some images from the march -

Crowds at the Metro

Loved this!

These two guys were totally out of their element; they couldn't even handle the volume of our rally cries!  Wait 'til they experience the full extent of our wrath!

My dad and my ladyfriend

Got to meet one of my favourite fashion journalists - Lynn Jaeger!

The love is big, and the hats match!

So now we're home, and as such often the question of how to maintain the momentum arises.  However, it seems like the current administration is going to keep those fires stoked with the executive orders coming out of the White House.  But as we know, it's not enough to be incensed. These troubled times require action.  Thankfully there are a lot of ways to engage in the battle.

I've been referring back to this post, Twenty Things You Can Do When the World Is Terrifying, regularly.  (Think it was Karen who sent me to this post...)  I also believe in Craft as Solace, which reminds me of this cross stitch I uploaded here once before -

The ladyfriend and I are committed to being informed and get headlines from The Guardian and The New York Times.  I'm also listening to Democracy Now! and the NPR Politics podcast.  We've sent money to the ACLU (thank you, thank you, thank you) and will be sending money to Planned Parenthood (also a big thank you to them - I used them for gynecology exams before I had insurance, and they were ones I went to when I needed to find out whether I was pregnant).  And of course, we'll be sending postcards, marching, and resisting the normalization of the fascism we're facing.

Stay nasty, my friends!

The boy had to work but went to protests on Inauguration Day.