Unlike my husband, I did not grow up in a family that took me to marches and rallies as a child.
Although my parents (my father an immigrant from Armenia) were proud Democrats, they were not politically active. I remember once overhearing a heated debate in our living room when my father was admonishing our neighbors to vote for Adlai Stevenson. But that memory and a very few others are the extent of my political upbringing.
This contrasts in profound and poignant ways with my husband Michael who grew up in New York City in a highly political family. He recalls participating in countless marches and rallies all over New York as a child, with his parents holding placards. He has vivid memories of attending rallies to save the lives of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and remembers the pall that fell over the city when they were executed at Sing Sing in 1953.
The first march I participated in was in 1969 when I arrived on the Oberlin College campus — it was during the Vietnam War and the place was on fire with anti-war protests. I remember falling in step behind a river of people as we marched around Tappan Square in the center of town — the upper-class students had posters, banners and knew chants. I was wide-eyed and followed.
The marches around Tappan Square soon led to students renting large U-Haul trucks, filling the backs with hay, packing in too many of us with sleeping bags on a Friday evening, driving through the night, and marching in Washington D.C. on Saturday. That became a regular routine. Now I, too, knew the chants and carried posters. I felt uplifted and inspired by the seemingly endless stream of people unified for a cause, marching in solidarity, and determined to affect the political process. We believed we could make a difference.
And we did.
Political dissent has a long and proud history in this nation dating back to the 1600s. Some early American colonists were pacifists — they denounced the persecution of the native people and insisted that the land belonged to the Indians. For this and other assertions, these early protesters and their Quakers comrades were banned from Massachusetts in 1654 because, in the words of the General Court, they were “a cursed sect of heretics who take upon themselves to be … infallibly assisted by the Spirit.”
Since the 1600s, movements have used marches, demonstrations, rallies, and civil disobedience to amplify the voices of ordinary citizens, put pressure on lawmakers, and effect social and political change.
The anti-slavery movement, which began in the late 1700s, is one example, and the list continues decade after decade with the labor reform movement (late 1800s), the suffrage movement (early 1900s), the movement to oppose World War I, the labor movement (early 1900s), the movement to oppose World War II, the civil rights movement (1950s and ‘60s), the United Farm Workers movement (1960s), the anti-Vietnam War movement (1960s and ‘70s), the women’s movement (1960s and ‘70s), the gay rights movement (1960s and ‘70s), the environmental movement (1970s and ‘80s), the nuclear weapons freeze movement (1980s), the anti-nuclear power movement (1980s and ‘90s), and right up to today with the disability rights movement, the movement for trans rights and the water protectors at Standing Rock.
Marches, demonstrations, vigils and rallies are the pillars of any movement for social and political change, and they matter. Movements are made up of people willing to swim against the tide, stand up for what is right when what is right is not popular, struggle and even suffer for their firmly held convictions. American radical, pacifist, and nonviolent activist David Dellinger wrote, “… history is made by people who commit themselves, their lives, and their energies to the struggle.”
On Saturday, people all over this country will march — in gatherings large and small, from coast to coast — in opposition to the inauguration of Donald Trump. Not only will folks be marching to oppose his racist, truth-twisting, misogynistic, climate-change-denying, doggedly uninformed, and contempt-filled rhetoric and practices, but people will be marching to support the care and protection of children and families, to express their reverence for Mother Earth, to demonstrate their solidarity with immigrants and refugees, and to voice their hopes for peace and their love for justice.
My husband and I are currently in Austin, Texas, visiting our son and are marching through the streets of that city together. I am happy to be counted as a Texan for one day as I raise my fist in opposition to the Trump inauguration and remember that all of us marching are part of a centuries-old, history-changing, noble and proud tradition of peaceful dissent.
Let the protests begin.
The Rev. Dr. Andrea Ayvazian, of Northampton, is an ordained pastor in the United Church of Christ.