News
Hamilton goes to Washington DC
By Haley Lynch ’17
January 26, 2017
Last week, a new President of the United States of America was inaugurated in Washington, D.C. The following day, thousands of demonstrators including approximately 130 students, faculty and staff from Hamilton College, Utica College, and surrounding communities, arrived to participate in the Women’s March on Washington. Participants from our community were conveyed on three buses, paid for with the help of an account set up by student organizers that allowed participants and supporters to contribute funds. Within the first month of the account’s opening, $15,000 worth of funds had been donated by school organizations, alumns, students, parents, faculty, staff and community members to help cover the cost of the buses.
The main goal of the march, according to the organizer’s website, was to “stand together in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families – recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country.” Barbara Perego ’17, who helped organize transportation to the march in Washington, was naturally enthusiastic about the message of the Women’s March. When asked what motivated her to attend and to help make sure others could get there, too, she responded, “Everyone had their own reasons for marching but overall, we wanted to have our voices heard… I marched to be a voice for those whose voices had been silenced and ignored. I marched to fight for my rights and show resistance against the political shift in this country.”
After an eight-hour bus ride overnight to D.C., the Hamilton students were tired but eager to join the throngs of demonstrators. Although it took over two hours to get into the metro station at Shady Grove, Stephanie Talaia-Murray ’17 said, “It almost felt like a mini pre-march, with people around us buzzing excitedly about the event to come.”
Meanwhile, sister marches were taking place all over the globe, reaching all seven continents and drawing somewhere between 3-4 million demonstrators, by some counts. Small pockets of Hamilton students traveled to Seneca Falls, the site of the first women’s rights convention in 1848, as well as to New York City or Boston to participate. A local march in Utica drew a smaller, but equally passionate crowd of demonstrators wearing the recently popularized “pussy” hats, holding spirited signs and responding with cheers to cars that drove by honking and giving thumbs up to the group.
Liz Lvov ’17, who drove to Seneca Falls with several other Hamilton students commented, “I’m glad I went to the march… but also I was bothered that after the march four or five white women spoke... In what concrete ways are we going to interrogate our whiteness and challenge white supremacy? In moving forward, we need to make sure that we are not reproducing the values and practices of a racist and transphobic regime in our practice of it.”
Aleta Brown ’17 summed up her experience of the march, saying: “I felt a deep sense of solidarity with the women and others marching by my side last weekend… I am so incredibly thankful for all of the work done by countless women that came before me and I am prepared to pave the way for those that come after me.”
Ultimately, the consensus seemed to be that the Women’s March on Washington and sister marches worldwide were positive, including in the way they drew attention to questions about inclusion and representation to the surface in a way that, in Perego’s words, helped remind that “the women’s movement has the social responsibility to fight for and represent people of all genders, nationalities, sexualities, races, religions, classes, and mental and physical disabilities.”