At the first Women's March in 2017, I made my way to Washington D.C. in the car with a friend of mine, driving 12 hours into the night like bats out of hell to make it there on time. When we arrived at the march, we found a pair of bike posts flanking a street sign. These posts allowed us a bird's eye view of the hundreds of thousands of people that gathered that day to make their voices heard. I stood on that post for seven hours, pushing past my own physical limits, buoyed by the energy of the crowd.
I was struck that day (and again in 2018 in Nashville) by the physical fortitude it would take for all of us to keep showing up, time and again, to support the causes we care about and keep the pressure on this unspeakably awful administration.
In 2019, we took this challenge to a new high in Nashville, coming out in the middle of a massive rainstorm to celebrate progress and denounce racism, sexism, and hatred in all of its forms. As a volunteer and organizer, I was out in the rain setting up and breaking down from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., when the skies opened up and cut us short. But most of the artists and speakers got their chance—and there was something especially raw and beautiful about rallying in the rain. Below is my 3-minute talk that opened the event along with a few pictures of the 2000 people that showed up. As one woman's sign proclaimed, "The future is female and waterproof!"
