S1 E3- Peace & Power

Puja here.

When progressives were still standing around with our pants around our ankles, we were talking about how much worse things were going to get for already marginalized groups. And what were we going to do about it? As we talked about in Origin Stories (episode 1), that was when the idea for this podcast was born. The idea to March came at different times for us.

I bought my ticket to DC to attend The Women’s March the week it was announced. Shout out to my BFF for letting me crash with her (again). I did worry that there would be leftover KKK members from the inauguration hiding in trees ready to descend on us, but there literally was not room to move more than 2 steps at a time, a klansman was going to be able to hide in a tree? Unfounded! We each attended a march on January 21, 2017. Anju in Austin and Miranda in Dallas.

In this episode we talk about our march experiences, why we marched, March haters (misogyny and fragile masculinity), our commitments for the next four years, and some audio from the DC and Dallas marches.

One of the things we didn’t include in this episode were our discussions about the differences between the Women’s March vs say a Black Lives Matter march. The questions we want answered are:

What was it about the women’s march that led to no arrests? How come police officers were not in full riot gear? Or conversely, how come we didn’t experience the same energy from law enforcement that we see playing out at Black Lives Matter protests?
What can we do to ensure that both sets of marchers, regardless of intersectionality, get treated the same?

We obviously, don’t have the answer to this and we decided it was a topic that we will circle back to again, possibly in it’s own stand alone episode.

In the mean time, enjoy some pictures from the Austin March (courtesy of Anju)