#WhyIMarch

I have never done anything like this before in my life.

I am 53 years old and up until now, my forms of protest against what I believed were injustices, or demonstrations in defense of my beliefs, involved bitching to other people. From my couch. Or my computer. Or a bar stool.

But on Saturday, in the middle of the night, I will board a bus in Waterford, CT and I will journey to Washington, D.C. and I will march in the Women’s March on Washington. I am joining tens — possibly hundreds— of thousands of women and men from across the country to walk in protest against injustice and in defense of my beliefs. For the first time in my life, despite decades of hearing calls to action, I am finally driven to action.

Why?

I was disheartened and disgusted by what I saw take over our country over the last 18 months. The hatred, the lies, the misogyny, the racism. Two sides to every issue, and both are right and the other is not just wrong but stupid and shameful and unworthy of consideration. Disrespect. Shaming. Name-calling. A literal inability to hear another’s opinion if it differed. I complained about it from my couch and my barstool and my computer.

I went to bed the night of Nov. 8 feeling worried but still hopeful that the country I knew, the country my father fought for in World War II, would not succumb to the hatred. Would not let fear win. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” True enough.

On the morning of Nov. 9, my 18-year-old daughter texted me from her dorm room in New York City. “Is Trump president?” she wrote at 7 a.m. “Yes,” I texted back. “Is it safe for me to go outside?” she wrote.

Is it safe for me to go outside. Is. It. Safe. For. Me. To. Go. Outside. IS IT SAFE FOR ME TO GO OUTSIDE.

In my entire life I had never felt afraid to live in my country. To live in my community. To live. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

A few days after the election I was with my 82-year-old mother. We were watching the post-election news. “I feel like everything I did was for nothing,” my mother said.

Some context: My mother put herself through the master’s program at Columbia Journalism School in 1956 after her father told her he would not pay for it. She left her small town in central Massachusetts and moved to New York City and put herself through school because she wanted to advance in life. She wanted a career in journalism. She wanted to be the best she could be.

After Columbia she got a job as a reporter at a small newspaper in western Massachusetts. She was the first female police/courts reporter. Imagine being a 23-year-old woman covering the police and crime and the court system in 1957 small-town Massachusetts. Imagine the sexism. Imagine. When she got married in 1960, she wanted to keep her “maiden” name on her byline and the city editor refused. “You’re a married woman,” he said, dismissing her.

She quit to raise her children and then she went back and she rose through ranks. She was a trailblazer in journalism, for me, and for many others.

And so on Saturday I march. I march against fear. I march against hatred. I march against sexism. I march against the idea that any one is more deserving than another. I march in favor of civil rights, women’s rights, human rights, the right to be safe in your own home, to be safe in your workplace, to be safe in your community. I march, because the time has come for action. After all these years, the time has come.

I march.