Million Women March of enormous importance — from Taos to D.C.
In my opinion, no initiative addressing the horrors of the coming Trump administration is more significant than the Jan. 21 Million Women March — with its primary venue being the Washington, D.C., National Mall. But there are marches and demonstrations planned for that day in many other U.S. cities as well.
The U.S. Congress and courts are the two national political power bases that could possibly stop, or at least modify via constitutional checks and balances, clear and announced retrograde directions of this coming ultra-right administration. If Democrats in Congress vote as a block, it will take only three Republicans also in opposition to deny Trump appointments to the cabinet and Supreme Court of persons determined to turn back progress on many important fronts, including those of climate change; clean air and clean water; health care; and central to the coming march, women’s rights to control of their own bodies.
Trump has announced that he will nominate only persons to the U.S. Supreme Court who oppose Roe v. Wade — the opinion that guaranteed women the right to an abortion. With one Supreme Court place now open for Trump to fill, and others likely to arise during even a four year Trump presidency, he could severely undermine for decades to come the rights of women that a huge proportion of the American population feel are basic.
If the planned march on Washington is as large the 1964 civil rights march on the U.S. Capitol, and the speeches as moving and pointed, I believe that even Republican representatives and senators in Congress will think twice before daring to undermine women’s basic rights — and such additional recent advances as Obamacare and agreements and regulations fighting climate change.
U.S. courts are, in theory, less susceptible than politicians to public pressures. In truth, we know that the U.S. Supreme Court, and lesser courts, are clearly influenced by mass movements of public conscience, such recent advances in public thinking as those that led to same-sex marriage rights.
I know of one woman from Taos who plans to join the march at its epicenter in D.C. I hope many others will go. Several men and women friends from other states are joining the march, which in no way discourages sympathetic males. We need as many persons as possible to assemble on that same day in Santa Fe, and I hope in Taos, too.
This is a truly critical opportunity to put this nation as a whole, and the incoming Trump administration in particular, on notice that Americans will not tolerate erosion of the very basics of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all — with rights of women and care for our suffering Mother Earth now more than ever central to what majorities in this nation cherish very deeply.
Oatman lives in retirement in Arroyo Hondo.
