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01/18/2017 11:01 PMMary Wahlig Elliott of North Madison never thought of herself as the kind of person who would drive to the nation’s capitol and protest.
“Not because I haven’t thought it’s the right thing to do, but more because I don’t like crowds and all of the things that come with thousands and thousands of people: parking, transport, long lines for well-used Portapotties in high flu and GI-bug season,” says Elliott.
Like most busy working moms, she can hardly afford to get sick. Still, she and her twin daughters—and her good friend Adele and her daughter—will be boarding a Skedaddle bus at 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, Jan. 21, arriving at 7 a.m. at Lincoln Memorial Circle to take part in the Women’s March on Washington. It’ll be a long day. The group leaves around 7 p.m., arriving back home around midnight. Elliott says she’s also concerned about the potential for conflict and violence.
Still, she adds, she’s going anyway.
“It’s a little scary, but as Eleanor Roosevelt said, ‘Do one thing every day that scares you.’”
Still Revolutionary
Elliott, her daughters, and her two friends will be among an estimated 4,500 to 5,000 women, men, and children from Connecticut who will board more than 80 chartered buses to take part in the event.
Marchers are encouraged to bring signs, and United States or Connecticut flags. The Connecticut group has co-opted the state Office of Tourism’s “Connecticut—Still Revolutionary” tagline.
Those taking part in the marches and protests, whether in Washington, D.C. or locally, are not only hearkening back to Connecticut’s revolutionary past, but they are also partaking in a long tradition of protest in this country, starting with the Boston Tea Party in 1773, and continuing with the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, the Civil Rights marches and protests in the 1950s and 1960s, the March on Washington in 1969 to protest the Vietnam War, and the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011. Those who are taking part give a variety of reasons why, with some of them citing specific concerns about the incoming administration in Washington, D.C., but with most talking about what they are trying to accomplish. They want to show support for the rights of women, people of color, people in the LGBTQ community, Muslims, and others; to support people who might be affected by changes to health care laws; to make a show of joining together in unity and kindness; and to take part in an essential part of American Democracy, protest.
Along the Connecticut shoreline, buses will leave from Branford (already full), from Clinton (already full), and two will leave from North Haven (one is already full). And there are many more driving down in their cars, taking the train, or boarding airplanes, says Sarah Raskin, one of the organizers of the CT March on Washington Facebook group.
For those who can’t go to Washington, there are related events in Hartford, with more than 1,000 participants signed up; in Stamford, with more than 100 signed up; and in East Haddam, among other local initiatives in Connecticut.
Susan Bouregy of Centerbrook is going to the Washington, D.C. march with her daughter Lizzie, 19. Bouregy, 52, says she never felt the need to protest before.
“I thought things were progressing along just fine,” she says, but then, after the recent election, a woman in East Haddam posted a sign expressing support for Muslims, women, disabled people, LGBTQ people, and people of color.
The sign said, “We love you—boldly and proudly. We will endure.” The sign was defaced by graffiti. After that, a group called The Valley Stands Up was organized, drawing supporters from Chester to Old Saybrook and beyond, which is meeting regularly and next plans to meet Sunday, Jan. 29 at 3 p.m. at the Deep River Library, 150 Main Street, Deep River.
‘I’ve Got to Do This’
“I won’t be able to look my grandchildren in the eye if I don’t do something,” Bouregy says. “If reproductive rights fall apart, if I didn’t even protest, that would not be right. That’s why I’m motivated to do this. As someone who’s been sitting back for 50 years, I’ve got to do this.”
Bouregy says she is also motivated by the prospect of spending time with like-minded people.
“You start to feel like, ‘Am I alone?’ I had to make sure my tribe, so to speak, is still out there,” she says
Jennifer McFadden of Madison, who will be attending the March on Washington with her daughter, says the idea for a women’s march began when a retired attorney from Hawaii, Teresa Shook, found herself distraught after the recent election.
“She set up a Facebook page to organize a march on Washington, inviting her friends. Forty people signed up that first day. By the next morning, over 10,000 people had expressed interest in joining her. Now, over 170,000 men and women plan to march with Shook in Washington on Jan. 21,” McFadden says. “The organizers emphasize that the Women’s March is not an anti-Trump rally, but rather a rally in support of women’s rights. It is meant to bring together groups from diverse communities in a show of unity after the divisive, contentious 2016 election.”
McFadden says she has been a feminist since she was a teenager, but has never protested until now.
“Instead, my goal has been to further women’s rights via everyday actions. As a manager and lecturer at the Yale School of Management, I’m a vocal advocate for gender equality...I’ve worked to increase the number of female students at the School of Management and across Yale who are interested in high-growth entrepreneurship, a field that has traditionally been male-dominated,” she says. “Outside of Yale, I co-founded a company called Skillcrush, which teaches women technical skills.”
An Essential Part of Democracy
Still, McFadden says now is the time to make her voice heard in the form of a protest.
McFadden’s daughter Grace agrees.
“I personally believe protesting, especially for those without the ability to vote, is an essential part of democracy. Although I have considered attending a protest in the past, I never thought that I would be driving to Washington, D.C. for what might be one of the largest protests in recent history. I’m going to this protest with my mom. This is an integral part for me, as my mom has been a guiding force in how I think about politics,” Grace McFadden says. “She taught me about feminism and speaking my mind.”
Above all, Grace McFadden says she wants to give a voice to the voiceless.
“This protest is not just for me. It’s for my friends who will lose the ability to live normally because they won’t be able to get their medication once Obamacare is repealed. It is for the women who were sexually assaulted and watched as their assailants walked away without justice,” she says. “It is for the kids in my Gay Straight Alliance who are afraid to come out now because of our incoming vice president’s views on homosexuality. It is for the black lives lost to police brutality. It is for the Hispanic kids across the country who have had to listen to their classmates chant ‘Build a wall!’ It is for those who can’t speak up out of fear.
“So we march to be heard. We march to hold power to account. We march because we live in a country where we are extremely privileged to have the right to do so. We march because it is our responsibility to give voice to the marginalized and the disenfranchised. We march because we believe that by joining together in unity and kindness, we can show our leaders and the world just how great America already is and how great we will continue to be,” Grace McFadden says.
And, A Very Personal Reason
Todd Lyon, who lives in New Haven, and will be traveling to Washington, D.C. on the North Haven bus, says she has been fighting her whole life for civil rights, equal rights, against the criminalization of poverty, for income fairness, and for income equality across the board. Lyon’s first organized protest took place when she was in the 5th grade. Girls were excluded from the grassy ball field, and had to stay on the blacktop adjacent to a parking lot. Her protest landed her in the principal’s office.
Lyon says she is protesting in Washington, D.C. for all of the big issues, and one that is very personal.
“If Medicaid is revoked, my life will be in peril,” she says. “That sounds dramatic, because it is. I have five autoimmune disorders, including latent autoimmune diabetes of adulthood. That is full-blown Type 1, which happened when I was about 50...I wear an insulin pump and a glucose monitor 24/7…I also take injections for rheumatoid arthritis and have a daily regimen of pills that keep me awake and alive and moving forward. I am a low-income person—the proverbial starving artist—and I cannot afford any of my medications or office visits or lab work. Much of this has to do with the fact that the pharmaceutical companies, in tandem with the insurance industries, have Americans by the throat. Without Obamacare, millions of us will lose 100 percent of our health care.”
Don’t Leave the Work to Others
Dorothy Goldberg, who lives in East Haven, and who served as Cantor at Temple Beth Tikvah in Madison from 2001 to 2010, is the child of a Holocaust survivor from Holland.
“We grew up believing that when you don’t protest against evil when you see it, you are tacitly supporting it,” she says. “It is always important to turn up in person. You don’t leave the work of protesting wrongdoing to other people. Democracy is a system that requires us to participate in every aspect of it—when we don’t, it dies. That’s my deepest fear for America.”
Goldberg says she is delighted that her husband, David Ross Russell, decided to take off work from his medical practice on Friday to join her and their daughter, Bekka Ross Russell, as they head down to Washington together.
“We all woke up on Nov. 9 feeling as though we had entered some sci-fi dystopia, and this is really the only way we all have any hope of dealing with it. My husband is British and both our children have dual citizenship, so it is not out of the question that we will leave the country if things really get bad. We have a lot of friends and family who are going and hope to meet up with them in Washington, though it may be difficult with the crowds!”
Bouregy adds that protest has a long and great tradition in the United States, “going back to the Boston Tea Party. This is what we’re supposed to do.”
Facebook Links for
Washington DC: www.facebook.com/womensmarchonwash/?fref=ts
Hartford: www.facebook.com/events/1144298879019419/
Stamford: www.facebook.com/events/226222651167120/
East Haddam Vigil: www.facebook.com/events/956255097840849/
Valley Stands Up: www.facebook.com/The-Valley-Stands-Up-1036068869835412/?fref=ts