This is #WhyWeMarch

At seven in the morning on Saturday two of my friends and I made our way through Arlington, Virginia to board the jammed subway in our nation’s capital surrounded by hundreds of women sporting pink knitted hats and witty cardboard signs.

Some said that the march was an overreaction by the radical feminist movement against the President, but as I bore witness to the thousands of women of all ages passionately sharing their stories and marching, the reason for the event was more than the disappointment of an unexpected political outcome.

Women marched to remind the world of the strides that have been taken in the past hundred years: earning the right to vote and the safe access to reproductive care. Women marched as a reminder of the importance of resources like Planned Parenthood that offer all peoples the access to health care that they may have otherwise gone without.
Women marched to stand up to the bigoted comments made by the leaders that they have elected to represent them. Women marched for the opportunity to have a voice in our government in hopes of sparking the conversation for equal pay and equality among the workplace. Women marched because they do not care if they do not look pretty when they aren’t smiling, because they know that it is when they are at their fiercest.
As I look back to lifting the elderly women over a wall, so they too could rally supporters, I can’t help but feel humble enough to have been allowed the privilege to march alongside the women and men who will fill the next generation’s history books with their inspiring narratives of the Women’s March on Washington.
So next time you think that the march was an overreaction, ask someone why they went and try to understand the complications of living in a man’s world.