Women's March Minnesota

Like 100,000 people in St. Paul and 3 million or so around the world, I spent the day at a Women's March. It had that feeling of a really big demonstration where you have to wait an hour or two to get anywhere once it starts, and you miss half of the speakers. I guess it may have been the largest march ever at our state Capitol.

It was all very congenial, though, and I could tell there were a lot of first-time march-goers there. I hope they'll all be back and, more important, raise their voices to their elected representatives, run for office themselves, and vote in 2018 and every other election before and after that.

Here's my sign. I wore it on my back:


Close-ups of the circular photos tucked in around the letters:




I realized as I gathered photos to use that these women (among a lot of others) are my heroes. When asked, I usually can't come up with names of people I consider heroes, but this exercise made me realize that I have lots of heroes. These are some of the ones who had high-resolution photos available in Google images.

The four rows are, left to right: Heather McGee of Demos, cartoonist Allison Bechdel, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, activist Ai-jen Poo, writer Rainbow Rowell, all-star professor Melissa Harris-Perry, comedian Aparna Nancheria, law professor and activist Zephyr Teachout, activist Bree Newsome, immediate-past EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, professor Brittney Cooper, and comedian Janine Brito.

I didn't take a lot of photos of other signs because my hands were cold and I was also banging on an empty coffee can a lot with a drum stick and texting people I was trying to meet up with (unsuccessfully). But here are the ones I liked the best:




The sign on the left is a quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream: "Though she be but little, she is fierce."


There were a lot of versions of this one, usually reading "I cannot believe we still have to protest this shit," but this woman had put a lot of work into her hand-cut letters, so she got the photo.




Pop culture references from elementary students.


Some of her reasons: Black Lives Matter, refugees welcome, environmental justice.


I've heard this pun before, but what I really liked about this woman's sign was her illustration of President 46%:


Tiny hands and all.


And the last word goes to this woman who summed up the feeling of the day.