An Open Letter to the Women's March

From a previous march participant

Dear Women's March,

I am a white woman who had previously participated in the Women's Marches in Washington, DC in 2017 and 2018. I went despite the controversy regarding the knitted pink pussy hats that many women wore as a symbol of a vagina and Donald Trump's infamous “Grab them by the pussy” quote. I also went despite racial tensions between white upperclass feminists and their non white counterparts.

I'm writing this three days after Election Day where Donald Trump has been declared the winner. Now I'm hearing that you are going to schedule a rally in front of Union Station in Washington, DC this Saturday. Then you are going to be one of the organizers of a People's March in DC before Inauguration Day on January 18. Even though I live in the DC area and I could easily make it to both events via Metro, my response to you ladies is this:

Go fuck yourselves! Seriously, go fuck yourselves!

The time to organize an opposition is before Election Day. I had taken advantage of early voting to cast my ballot for Kamala Harris. What's more I did phone banking and text banking with the Poor People's Campaign trying to encourage people to register and vote. I also sent postcards to infrequent voters through a joint program of UU the Vote and Reclaim Our Vote. Did any of you Women's March organizers make any similar effort to encourage voting or did you just spend your time sitting in your cozy upscale homes sipping tea and eating cucumber sandwiches then started pearl clutching when Trump won?

Did you any of you even vote for Kamala Harris? That's great if you did.

Or were you one of those voters who left the name for president blank and only voted blue down ballot in order to “punish” Harris for Israel bombing the hell out of Gaza? Or did you vote for a third party candidate in order to “punish” Harris for Gaza? Or did you not bother with voting at all? I have news for you—all of those methods ultimately benefitted Donald Trump. And now you're going to protest something that happened because, in the face on encroaching fascism, you chose to make a silly protest vote at the ballot box or not voted at all that ultimately led to the election of a candidate who has said that he supports Benjamin Netanyahu destroying Gaza so that he and his son-in-law Jared Kushner can build a Gaza beach vacation resort for wealthy guests. At least Harris said that she was open to the idea of decreasing arms to Israel but instead you called her “Holocaust Harris” and now you helped to elect a candidate who's even more into killing Palestinians than “Genocide Joe” ever allegedly was. (We could all debate whether Joe Biden was really into having Benjamin Netanyahu commit genocide against the Palestinians but that's a separate issue.)

Then there is your past leadership issues. I had stopped participating after the 2018 march because of your dysfunctional leadership. I'm not inclined to rejoin a movement that has infighting among its leadership.

I'm not the only one who's less than thrilled at the idea of doing another Women’s March. There are women of color who, back in 2017, said that they didn't feel included in the movement. Now, judging from these tweets on Twitter/X, they are way less interested in participating with white women this time around given that a majority of white women had voted for Donald Trump, just like the previous two elections. Here are just a small sampling of these tweets.

I don't blame them for their stance. A majority of white women have voted for Donald Trump for the third election in a row. As a white woman myself, I am astounded that I was in the minority of white women who voted for Kamala Harris. I literally can't explain why my fellow white women chose to reelect a candidate who's an open misogynist, who has been accused of multiple rapes and sexual assaults, who's openly proud of appointing Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe vs. Wade, and had completely mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic that ultimately left over one million Americans dead. Yet white women are asking women of color to participate in yet another Women’s March despite that recent vote? Get real!

And now there are white women who are urging other white women to wear blue friendship bracelets on Twitter/X to let non white women know that they are “safe.” How lame is that?!? I'm a white woman with African American friends and I don't need to wear some stupid bracelet to let them know that I'm “safe” because I've known many of them for years. I also chuckle at the posts saying that you can buy these bracelets on Temu, since it's common knowledge that many of the items sold on Temu were made in Chinese sweatshop. There's nothing like exploiting underpaid Chinese sweatshop labor to make a statement with African Americans that you are a safe white woman.

In conclusion, you can take your Women's March, pink pussy hats, and blue friendship bracelets and shove it! I'm done with the Women's March because I consider it to be a waste of time. From now on I'm only going to focus on volunteering with local groups in my area in an effort to do what I can to mitigate whatever this new Trump Administration 2.0 throws at us.

Sincerely,

Kimberly Keyes

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