There's Something Happening Here

Cincinnati showed up on Saturday for the Women's March. And so did the rest of the country and the world.

Millions strong across the globe, with an estimated 10-12,000 of those in Cincinnati. I love that I knew at least a dozen folks heading to Washington Park, yet with the massive crowd I didn’t run into a single person I knew.

The images of the marches from around the country and the world were awe inspiring. I couldn’t get enough of them — from Antarctica to Paris, to New York to Spokane. Even Boise showed up and marched in a snowstorm. BOISE.

A few shots I took of the crowd at Washington Park. More on my Flickr.









 
I felt heartened by it all. 

It’s just one step, but I feel very encouraged to know there are a lot of us paying attention. And though it may seem far away now, the midterm elections are next year. All 435 voting seats in the House of Representatives and 33 out of the 100 Senate seats (two for each state) will be up for grabs November 2018.

Meanwhile, it seems just when I am thinking that there needs to be some actionable next steps, some guide for how to activate change, someone comes along who does the work.

• First, the folks who organized the Women’s March on Washington have put together this 10 actions in 100 days guide. Writing, calling, planning. I have already called Senator Rob Portman twice. (I supposed I should just go ahead and put him into my favorites. You’re so lucky, Rob!)
  
  
• Second, the Indivisible Guide, written by former congressional staffers with best practices for making Congress listen, is an unbelievably useful resource. Major kudos for the folks who put this together. (It’s a great little civics reminder as well.) And the Indivisible Guide has national and local Facebook groups you can join too.
  
  
• Also, my friend and former Enquirer colleague Maggie Downs has also started a monthly newsletter, The Avalanche, dedicated to simple acts of citizen activism. Her tagline is: ‘Put enough snowflakes together, big things happen.’ Hah! (Mine would have been called Landslide, but that’s because when I grow up I want to be Stevie Nicks.) 

SNL has been killing it lately, and if you didn’t see Aziz Ansari’s opening monologue, it was pitch perfect in every way. Thoughtful, funny and so on-point. 

Here is an excerpt, but watch the whole thing:

“If you are excited about Trump, great. He’s president, let’s hope he does a good job. If you’re scared about Trump and you’re very worried, you’re going to be okay too. Because if you look at our country’s history, change doesn’t come from presidents. Change comes from large groups of angry people. And if day one is any indication, you are part of the largest group of angry people I have ever seen.”

Stay woke, friends. Whether you lean right or left, we can all see wrong.