My Womxn's March 2.0 Experience

Elizabeth Faaland, P4P Founder & President

You get up too early and hurry up and wait, in the cold. You help people line up, check in and try to answer questions with a bullhorn that amplifies but directs sound in one direction and people hard of hearing have a difficult time with the amplification. During your check-ins, you see friends and make new ones. One friend points out that you have a mutual Facebook friend you both met online 20 years ago, no way! How rad is that? Then the buses are late so you wait in your car, but only some of them show up. It's ok, the march

doesn't actually start for a couple more hours. You chose to stay with your peeps and ride on the last bus with them, hoping the presence of a leader will make them feel secure.
Finally you arrive, manage to find a dozen of the 560 people you came with and meet some really cool people. It's a whole lot of sign looking and picture taking. The speeches sound like they're really good, but you can't actually hear them because you're too far away...and there's people way further away than you. Your sign is easy to see and confusing so people repeatedly ask you about it, those that are too shy, you try to see and pull in for conversation.
You start to maneuver to the "start point" which is never actually the right spot, and you should know better, but then again texts from friends report the same standing still for forever where they are, too. At noon, an hour after the march was supposed to start, the giant indigenous women's heads you've been using as a landmark, start to move. For some reason the right side keeps stopping while the left side flows, "Where are they going?".
Finally, you decide to move left and make very good progress. You find out blocks later that the porta-potties were on the right, as was the line, so when the marchers hit the line, they couldn't tell the difference between the line and the marchers, and the people behind them couldn't and the people behind them and so on.
A few blocks in you realize everyone is doing an amazing job staying in the street and moving very very slowly, but the sidewalks are wide open. You mobilize your group and hit the sidewalks. After 4 or 5 blocks the street is way less congested and your group is able to walk with plenty of space to move around back in the street.
You and your group try out a few chants. About an hour in, genius strikes and you find your groove in some "Hamilton" songs...REVOLUTION? Why, yes, that totally works. The best part? It's different, and the people who know it, join immediately and with much cheer.
You run into part of your bus caravan outside Tom Douglas' restaurants. He's in the street handing out water and his employees are serving hot tea.
You arrive at the Seattle Center just around 2 pm and turn right away from the center. Your buses are right there, waiting for you, with heat and bathrooms. The bus drivers are standing waving and directing you.
Before the first full bus pulls out, you hop on and celebrate with everyone on the bus. Make a plug about tomorrow's event and send them off. You do the same on the next bus and end up sitting next to someone who you've never met but have known through your kids school for years, rad, right?
You get home, take a bubble bath and crack a beer and then you're on the news!
You're exhausted, but so full of love, connection, empowerment and energy that you can't get off the damn computer. Your consumed by an obsessive need to share, connect, and...get to work!
There is no other feeling in the world like this. There's a ton of reasons why we march, but the reason we value it, the reason we come back is because it triggers the reward center of our brain. Our bodies are beat and injured, or faces burnt, our lips chapped, but we also feel almost euphoric. Basically, it makes you feel so good.
My new working theory is that when you feel you belong, you feel safe. When you feel safe, you're ok with pushing your comfort zone. When you push your comfort zone, you grow. When you grow, you start to be authentic. When you're authentic, you can live wholeheartedly. When you live wholeheartedly, changing your world falls into place organically.
So, when you come to a march, you get fired up, because you feel you belong to something...from there, changing the world is just a leap of faith.