Women's March

Protest photos: then & now

~ MaryG ~ 13 Comments
Daily writing prompt
If you had the power to change one law, what would it be and why?
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As a proud feminist and longtime supporter of abortion rights, I’m still struggling to understand what the fuck happened in the United States on November 8, 2016. The last seven years have been extremely tough to watch. And there’s no end in sight. Unbelievably, both Trump and Trumpism are alive and well. All three of his Supreme Court appointees are younger than me (actually Brett Kavanaugh and I are the same age). I’ll probably outlive Trump, but not his legacy. In many ways, it’s just really depressing. All these years of protesting and donating and voting, and we’ve gone backwards.

Here are some black and white photos I took at a Pro-Choice Rally in Washington DC in 1989. I used my 35mm Canon camera.

Here are some photos from the Women’s March on Washington on January 21, 2017—the day after Trump’s inauguration. It was the largest single-day protest in US history.

My daughter and me in pussy hats knitted by my sister

The Forced Birth Movement is terrifying and misogynist. Abortion is essential healthcare. Healthcare is a human right. Federal law should protect that right.

Yeah, it’s politics

~ MaryG ~ 1 Comment
Daily writing prompt
Are you holding a grudge? About?
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I don’t think I’ll ever get over the fact that people I know–close family members–voted for Trump. That’s it. That’s the grudge. Sadly, it permanently changed how I feel about them.

Given how excited I was feeling about voting for the first woman president (in my pantsuit) on November 8, 2016, it was the Access Hollywood tape that I cannot believe they overlooked in order to pull the lever for Trump. In 2020, it was just everything. I feel like their decision revealed a fundamental difference in values so deep that I never really knew them.

So now we just don’t talk about anything remotely political, but that’s hard. Small talk can be tedious with people you know (or thought you knew) well. It’s a real rift and that’s sad.

My daughter and me in Washington, D.C. on January 21, 2017 after the Women’s March. We’re smiling, but fury was the mood of the day.

Twitter: A Place for Your Rage

~ MaryG ~ Leave a comment

It’s been four years since I posted anything in this blog, which was a sort of mid-life experiment in connected creativity.  Everyone was doing it.  It seemed fun!  Looking back on those posts from 2015-2016, I feel as though they are from a completely different time in history.  They are from pre-Trump America.  Cold winters! youth sports! reading glasses! Were those topics really top-of-mind just four years ago? Here’s a photo of me, in my pantsuit, going to vote for America’s first female President on Tuesday, November 8, 2016 – the very last day of that era.  That was such a good day!  I skipped choir rehearsal that night to stay home and watch history being made.

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Well, we all know how that turned out.  Tears, disbelief, consoling my college-aged daughter, and booking a trip to Washington DC to be part of the first massive Women’s March, were among my first moves in this new era.

I am well aware that the daily challenges I face living in Trump’s America, as a white college-educated woman born in this country, are mostly emotional.  Immigrants, journalists, scientists, poor young women in need of healthcare and many others face actual threats to their lives and livelihoods.  Still, my emotional challenges are real to me.  And with ANGER being the biggest one, I’m glad I discovered Twitter.  It seems like venting is its raison d’être.  Things that are just “too political” for Facebook can be said, and very succinctly, on Twitter.  And guess what?  It turns out that many other people are thinking the exact same thing.  Maybe it’s true that it’s just an “echo chamber” further cementing our differences, but it’s also a relief.  You are most definitely not alone in thinking whatever your thinking.  Rage away people.  That’s what we do now.