Engagement with the 2018 Women’s March was strong in Washington, Las Vegas, and about 250 other U.S. cities. On January 20 about 3,000 marched from the Greater Columbus Convention Center to the Ohio Statehouse. With this year’s Power to the Polls theme, organizers sought to channel energy from the #MeToo revelations and President Trump’s low approval rating among women into electoral gains for women and progressive candidates in the midterm elections.
“Last year was a historical moment,” said Rhiannon Childs, Executive Director of Women’s March Ohio. “This year we’ve turned that moment into a movement. We wanted to take our collective power, unleashing our ability to organize and mobilize, and take that same energy to the polls to get more women and progressive candidates into office.”
As often happens with mass social movements, debate has erupted among groups and individuals engaged in it. In Ohio there is controversy over the narrow focus on electoral politics, and claims that the voices of women of color and other marginalized groups have been excluded from the Women’s March since its inception last year.
reen Mountain homeboy Nathan Giffin was 32, white, and holding a BB pistol at his side when multiple police shot him multiple times outside the Montpelier High School he had once attended. Reportedly, Giffin had admitted addictions to cocaine and heroin, and maybe he even had an intent to die from suicide by cop. If so, he succeeded. Nine Vermont police officers pumped him full of bullets, dropping him on the spot as he stood passively at the far end of a football field after almost an hour standoff.
