By Don Nelson
We devoted a lot of space in this week’s newspaper to the local expression of the Women’s March movement that blossomed globally last weekend — with good reason.
The march in Twisp was a historic event for this community, connected in deed and spirit with similarly historic events around the country and the world. An estimated 600 people or more (head counts vary) walked peacefully through the streets of Twisp on a day when the recent bitter cold relented but the snow remained.
It was a remarkable turnout not just of women, but also men, children and, because it’s the Methow, a few dogs. For many participants it was clearly a family event. Lots of signs — some funny, some serious, a few of questionable taste — bobbed up and down in the marcher’s hands as they made their way through town.
The atmosphere was neither tense nor particularly political. It was rather like a big community party, with many familiar faces (and perhaps a few surprises). This was the Methow Valley at its collective best.
Meanwhile, other valley residents traveled to Seattle to take part in the massive march there, and another Methow contingent took part in the Washington, D.C., event that overwhelmed the nation’s capital. Our community was well represented across the continent.
The Twisp march concluded with a rally in the center’s gym that included music and a couple of talks. We had several requests to include those talks in this week’s paper, so we asked speakers Shannon Huffman Polson and Peggy Hosford to send us copies of their prepared remarks (read Polson’s here and Hosford’s here), and they graciously agreed. For that reason, and because we included other march-related articles on these opinion pages, the many letters to the editor we received about the march will have to wait a week for publication because we ran out of room. But we do intend to print them.
We cleared out some additional space for photos from the march, which include some taken by our staff and others submitted by participants in Seattle and Washington, D.C. See galleries at the end of the news story here.
The march was a social media phenomenon for our Facebook page, where we posted a couple of photos and some brief verbiage shortly after the march concluded. Our “metrics” — total “likes,” views, shares and comments — exceeded anything that we registered during even the most intense days of the Carlton Complex Fire in 2014.
The Twisp march was also noted on the Seattle Times website, and in a Huffington Post roundup of marches in smaller communities around the country.
While covering the event, I observed a couple of interesting moments. As the marchers finished the Glover Street stretch of their journey, an older gentleman stalked by, shoulders hunched, with a scowl on his face. “Stupidest thing I’ve ever seen,” he muttered. So, another quarter heard from. A few seconds later, a pickup truck pulled into the Les Schwab parking lot and a young boy — 8 or so, I would guess — hopped out and caught sight of the banner carried by the march’s leaders, which read “Love Not Hate Makes America Great.”
“What does that mean?” the boy asked the truck’s grown-up driver (presumably his father).
It was an earnest child’s question, and a good one that will be answered over time as the impact of millions of people marching for human rights, dignity and social justice plays out. “Now what?” was the question reverberating early this week as participants began to think about what involvement will mean going forward. Without deliberate action and momentum, the good feelings and solidarity of the past weekend’s events will not make much difference.
There was some inevitable social media snarking and sniping — much of it with an anti-woman tone — about the local march and the others around the country. But the sheer numbers make the marches, in the aggregate, an event that can’t be ignored, dismissed, explained away as “feminist” or denigrated as political theater. In fact, they represent the American majority — about 55 percent of voters did not choose Donald Trump.
In the current political environment, the marchers’ concerns are real, legitimate and motivated by a genuine desire to protect the truly American values of caring for each other and the (still) great nation we call home.
