---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 26 Oct 1997 23:12:10 -0200 From: Ed Schwartz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Million Womens' March: A Remarkable Achievement (full message) Sorry about the false send. I was checking out these web links. The first is to the Million Women's March web site, which played a strong role in organizing the march itself. Take note, organizers: <http://timesx2.com/mwm/> This is the Inquirer's Coverage: <http://www3.phillynews.com/packages/wmill/march.asp> I'm sending the platform as a separate post. But as with the Million Man's March, neither the organizing committee nor the platform provides an adequate explanation for what happened here. The press reports you've read about the numbers are accurate. Whether the crowd got precisely to 300,000 or 500,000 or even 1,000,000 is beside the point. Those were the kind of numbers that arrived. Moreover, the March snuck up on Philadelphia as much as the rest of the country. The organizing committee was composed entirely of local activists--some of whom I know. For the most part, though, this was the Nationalist end of the Afro-American community, and they're not even a highly visible sector of the community here--at least not within the conventional media or even among community organizations. The March committee didn't even have the funds to post the $10,000 fee required by the City as of about 10 days ago. They didn't have the funds for the sort of loudspeakers that would have made it possible to hear the speeches all over the Parkway. A few days before the event, they announced that Coretta Scott King and Rosa Parks would be attending--but both said, "no." Beyond Winnie Mandela and Congresswoman Maxine Waters, most of the speakers were unknown as well. But at some point about a week ago, the whole thing clicked. Suddenly, just about every African-American woman you knew was going. And while it was hard to believe the marchers' claims that thousands of people were going to pour into the City from all over the country--even up to the night before--that is precisely what happened. It clicked here. And it clicked in a whole lot of other places--thanks, in part, to networks made possible by the Internet. This certainly was is a stunning example of what I've been saying about the use of this medium for organizing. Was the march "disorganized?" Not at all...not on the day. People arrived in th e early morning. There were moments of prayer, a march to Independence Hall, then off to the Parkway. I didn't see any of this myself..it was not my occasion... But people on the ISCV staff who participated spoke of the spirit of solidarity, the enormous good will, the warmth, and the commitment that characterized the entire occasion. It was another opportunity for people who have been treated with utter contempt by the dominant political and economic elites in this country to find one another..and to assert that they are more than ready to fight back. Did the March offer a clearly defined plan or even program for this resistance? No...but that wasn't its point. Its point was to bring the army together so that its soldiers could be reassured of its existence. The rest, hopefully, will come later. That all this was accomplished without money, without media, and without a Messianic figure at the helm made it all the more remarkable an achievement. It is clear that millions of people in this country are ready to move, if only a convincing focus can be found to define the movement. Ed Schwartz Ed Schwartz, Institute for the Study of Civic Values, 1218 Chestnut St., Rm. 702, Philadelphia, Pa. 19107 215-238-1434 [EMAIL PROTECTED] The ISCV home page can be reached at http://libertynet.org/~edcivic/iscvhome.html Also check out "Neighborhoods Online" at http://libertynet.org/community/phila/natl.html. It's the Institute's project with LibertyNet to support neighborhood activism. To subscribe to the Institute's international mailing list send to [EMAIL PROTECTED] the one line message: subscribe civic-values To subscribe to the Institute's Pennsylvania mailing list send to [EMAIL PROTECTED] the one line message: subscribe penn-neighbor "Citizenship is the American ideal. There may be an army of actualities opposed to that ideal, but there is no ideal opposed to that ideal." --G.K. Chesterton
