January 21 demonstrations in your town or city

When's the protest against the Trudeau regime going to take place?

I posted the images and video to twitter on my feed  -- @seanfordyce and they can be found on #womensmarch hashtag.

As well you cand find pictures from the air that really give an idea of the size of the crowd stretching from Elgin to Bronson.

A good crowd in Halifax.... more poetry and singing than most demos I have attended. And lots of energized women from diverse backgrounds.  Nice to be a part of.  

I think the difference between Ottawa and Montréal may be with the way it was publicized. Several national stories mentionned the Ottawa planned demonstration without mentionning that Montréal was also holding one. Vancouver and Toronto had others.

No doubt there was local coverage but I did see Ottawa mentionned a lot more in stories before the event.

I can also add that the public sector unions did get the word out. While workers were not paid to come and were not already downtown but had to come in (being a Saturday) the network helped.

When considering that this is a massive demo for Ottawa it is important to recognize that previousl large demonstrations helpd at lunchtime had thousands of downtown workers there to participate at lunch. On a Saturday there are far fewer people there and people come in on their day off. This is a real indication how much this meant to people.

When it comes to organizing the PR work to get news for an event prior to it taking place is quite critical.

The other type of event I would absolutely turn out for woudl be Indigenous events. Unfortunatley there has been less than adequate pre-event coverage and then a story after the event -- and I have felt I wish I knew -- I would have gone to support it.

There is a lesson here for the media -- pre-coverage can determine largely the success of an event. And there is a lesson for organizers to engage with the media to get the word out. I must say it seems the women organizing this event did a great job letting the media know their plans and the media did a good job letting people know about the event.

I was at an Indigenous event the evening before, but it was cultural, not overtly political, though obviously everyone was utterly disgusted by the Big Orange Turd. And talking about the implications for Standing Rock and other Indigenous environmental struggles.

Couldn't be there for the Vancouver march unfortunately, but estimates were 10,000 - 15,000. The Kelowna event also got about 500 people apparently, which is pretty good for a place like that.

Women's March

I Can't Keep Quiet

These women never met And Practiced This Song online And Met At Womens March For The First Time.

‘Millions have done something together’ – why the Women’s March will spark the resistance

On Saturday night, for Donald Trump’s inauguration ball, police turned an entire grid square of Washington DC into a maze of fences, checkpoints and deserted roads, just to protect the partygoers. But even the cleverest maze has to have an entrance – and it took just a couple of hundred peaceful but courageous protesters to block it. As a result, thousands of rich people had to thread their way across a square mile of wire and concrete in their tuxedos and taffeta.

I know it annoyed them because I walked with them. In the absolute silence, I could hear they were angry and afraid. They looked, collectively, like a George Grosz painting of the Weimar elite come to life.

And then, to annoy them some more, one out of every 100 people in America marched to reject Trump’s project in its entirety. In the US, nearly 3.5 million people marched, the majority of them women, a huge proportion of them wearing pink, woolly “pussy hats” (There were marches against Trump in 20 countries around the world).

When a million people choke the transport system of a city, exchanging sudden and ephemeral chants, jokes and slogans with people they’ll never meet again, it is the collective memory they establish that truly records the event. For people who were not there, the media records such events according to an established formula: a soundbite from Madonna, a wide shot of the crowd, a vox pop with somebody’s grandma and finally a sceptic saying it’s all a waste of time. But events such as this alter people’s lives. They thrust big and complicated political questions into lives of routinely depoliticised people....

quote:

Saturday was, above all else, the sound of the progressive middle classes rejecting what’s good for the employers and embracing what’s good for the people. The DC hotel I stayed in turned, on the eve of the Women’s March, into an organising base for 200 low-paid cleaners and care workers. Spanish, Filipino and Caribbean-English words began to drown out the chatter of journalists and politicos.

Toni Johnson, who organises for the National Domestic Workers Association and originates from St Vincent and the Grenadines, told me: “We are apprehensive, we are scared, but we are resilient – we intend to fight back. He says he’s going to deport three million people – but it will only affect criminals. Our members know there are not three million criminals. I’m scared.” She is voicing the fears of many that the complex process they have gone through to gain residency and citizenship will be unpicked. These are the voices you just don’t hear much in the US media. Had they not block-booked the same hotel as a bunch of British journalists, I doubt either I or anybody else would have written about them. But by placing the story of these impoverished and downtrodden women of colour at the centre of the story, the organisers of the Women’s March have shaped history as it will now unfold.

Yesterday a massive protest at JFK airport against Trump's Muslim ban. This is what solidarity looks like! #RESIST