The North Shore mountains and Stanley Park filling the background, Jack Poole Plaza was a sea of pink, the ubiquitous “pussy hat”—a pink knitted beanie with cat ears—peppering the crowd. Signs jut out of the crowd: “Pussy grabs back,” “Women belong in the Resistance.”
The morning of January 21, 2017 in Vancouver was a typical January morning: overcast with a latent sogginess. The thup-thup of a helicopter circled passively overhead. Someone brought a marching tuba, for effect. Rallies are hard wired to inspire. They are uplifting, unifying, energizing. Attendees arrive indignant, passionate, disillusioned and mob mentality takes over from there. A crowd—especially with signs and megaphones—has a way of stoking an already present flame.
It all started with a grandmother in Hawaii and a t-shirt designer in New York. The thesis of the march would be hammered out as the movement grew from vague discord to an activated movement. For many it was meant to be a movement against President-elect Donald J. Trump. What it quickly morphed into, especially for the global representation of satellite marches, was a show of solidarity and a march against the misogyny, racism, ableism, xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia of the Trump campaign and associated administration.
From its outset, however, the Women’s March on Washington (WMW) encountered controversy. The initial name, Million Woman March, was seen as a controversial appropriation of the name of an African-American women’s march during the Civil Rights movement. The next issue was that of representation and diversity. The original roster was entirely white. After pushback, they were replaced by an African-American gun control activist, a Mexican-American criminal-justice reform advocate, and a Muslim-American activist with the Muslim Association of America.
Satellite marches popped up all over the U.S, North America and the world. The Vancouver march, just as all of the other associated WMW rallies, emerged in this cautionary psychological landscape: be inclusive.
Lisa Langevin, head of the Women’s Chapter of the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) and one of the co-ordinators for the Vancouver march, was initially planning on marching in the Seattle rally in the absence of a Vancouver rally. Why wasn’t there a Vancouver march, she asked herself? The Women’s March on Washington was two and a half weeks away. “I found myself asking, ‘if not me, then who?’” Together with another four organizers, all of whom she met through the process of planning the event, Langevin pulled together permits, social media promotion, guest speakers. Three days before the event, Langevin was expecting somewhere between 1000-2000 people.
“Then we spoke to the police and they were preparing for closer to 5000,” Langevin said. “Many rallies appeal to the activists and the left wing. But this march isn’t just about one issue. And so people who wouldn’t consider themselves activists are getting involved.”
When the numbers came in, it was between 12,000 and 15,000 people. It was truly massive turnout, one higher than anyone expected.
But for all of their positive agitation, rallies bring emotions to the surface, and with those emotions come confrontation. While at the same time as feeling intensely important, Vancouver’s WMW also held an unavoidable tension, a palpable distrust of one group against the other.
What was hard to identify on first arrival to the rally, and then harder to articulate the precise nature of the affront once it was realized, was a distinct lack of diversity. The rally felt “whiter” than walking down the street in downtown Vancouver any day of the week feels. There was the conspicuous absence of Black Lives Matter Vancouver, the fallout of which continues to be raw. Less than six blocks from Canada’s largest Chinatown and the presence of an Asian-Canadian community was distinctly missing. Even the LGBTQ+2S community, a distinguishing aspect of Vancouver’s identity, had no representative voice.
What happened?
There were many conversations of being “allies”. There were signs that read, “If it isn’t intersectional, it isn’t feminism”. There were high points. The rally was opened by Musqueam activist Rhiannon Bennet; the march was lead by Metis pipe carrier Aline Laflamme and her collective, Daughters of the Drum, Jodi Ortega, founder of SNAP (Support Network of those Abused by Priests), along with Nancy Trigueros, a Mexican-Canadian activist also spoke at the rally. There was Samaah Jaffer, a Muslim-Canadian writer for rabble.ca and Khelsilem, a Squamish activist who teaches the Squamish language at SFU. But the main criticism has been regarding the lack of representation on behalf of a number of different minority organizations. The awkward difference between representation and tokenization is impossible to ignore.
White feminism casts a large, unwieldy, and often compromising shadow. ShiShi Rose, an African-American activist based out of Brookyn, NY, wrote an open letter to the WMW “allies.” “Now is the time for you to be listening more, talking less, spend time observing, taking in media and art created by people of colour, researching, and unlearning the things you have been taught about this country.”
Zehra Naqvi, a UBC student, writer and Muslim activist in Vancouver, voiced a familiar concern. “They have no problem taking center stage, enjoying the role of playing the victim, and playing lip service to "end racism". Lets not forget it was middle-class white women that got Trump elected.”
Black Lives Matter Vancouver posted a statement on their website in response to the WMW the day before the rally. “Resistance is ongoing. It cannot be a one-time event where people in Vancouver congratulate themselves for minimal activism and return to watching and participating in systemic racism and oppression in Canada. Participating in a march does not absolve people’s complicity in structures that disproportionately harm women of colour, Indigenous women, queer and trans women of colour.”
True intersectionality has to do with the intersections of different marginalized identities. The number of searches tripled over the weekend for the term “intersectional feminism”, indication that perhaps this past weekend’s protests brought to the surface unfinished business in the arena of third-wave feminism. If it can spur important growth in the arena of activism and equality, it is better to lose a battle and win a war.
The morning of January 21, 2017 in Vancouver was a typical January morning: overcast with a latent sogginess. The thup-thup of a helicopter circled passively overhead. Someone brought a marching tuba, for effect. Rallies are hard wired to inspire. They are uplifting, unifying, energizing. Attendees arrive indignant, passionate, disillusioned and mob mentality takes over from there. A crowd—especially with signs and megaphones—has a way of stoking an already present flame.
It all started with a grandmother in Hawaii and a t-shirt designer in New York. The thesis of the march would be hammered out as the movement grew from vague discord to an activated movement. For many it was meant to be a movement against President-elect Donald J. Trump. What it quickly morphed into, especially for the global representation of satellite marches, was a show of solidarity and a march against the misogyny, racism, ableism, xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia of the Trump campaign and associated administration.
From its outset, however, the Women’s March on Washington (WMW) encountered controversy. The initial name, Million Woman March, was seen as a controversial appropriation of the name of an African-American women’s march during the Civil Rights movement. The next issue was that of representation and diversity. The original roster was entirely white. After pushback, they were replaced by an African-American gun control activist, a Mexican-American criminal-justice reform advocate, and a Muslim-American activist with the Muslim Association of America.
Satellite marches popped up all over the U.S, North America and the world. The Vancouver march, just as all of the other associated WMW rallies, emerged in this cautionary psychological landscape: be inclusive.
Lisa Langevin, head of the Women’s Chapter of the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) and one of the co-ordinators for the Vancouver march, was initially planning on marching in the Seattle rally in the absence of a Vancouver rally. Why wasn’t there a Vancouver march, she asked herself? The Women’s March on Washington was two and a half weeks away. “I found myself asking, ‘if not me, then who?’” Together with another four organizers, all of whom she met through the process of planning the event, Langevin pulled together permits, social media promotion, guest speakers. Three days before the event, Langevin was expecting somewhere between 1000-2000 people.
“Then we spoke to the police and they were preparing for closer to 5000,” Langevin said. “Many rallies appeal to the activists and the left wing. But this march isn’t just about one issue. And so people who wouldn’t consider themselves activists are getting involved.”
When the numbers came in, it was between 12,000 and 15,000 people. It was truly massive turnout, one higher than anyone expected.
But for all of their positive agitation, rallies bring emotions to the surface, and with those emotions come confrontation. While at the same time as feeling intensely important, Vancouver’s WMW also held an unavoidable tension, a palpable distrust of one group against the other.
What was hard to identify on first arrival to the rally, and then harder to articulate the precise nature of the affront once it was realized, was a distinct lack of diversity. The rally felt “whiter” than walking down the street in downtown Vancouver any day of the week feels. There was the conspicuous absence of Black Lives Matter Vancouver, the fallout of which continues to be raw. Less than six blocks from Canada’s largest Chinatown and the presence of an Asian-Canadian community was distinctly missing. Even the LGBTQ+2S community, a distinguishing aspect of Vancouver’s identity, had no representative voice.
What happened?
There were many conversations of being “allies”. There were signs that read, “If it isn’t intersectional, it isn’t feminism”. There were high points. The rally was opened by Musqueam activist Rhiannon Bennet; the march was lead by Metis pipe carrier Aline Laflamme and her collective, Daughters of the Drum, Jodi Ortega, founder of SNAP (Support Network of those Abused by Priests), along with Nancy Trigueros, a Mexican-Canadian activist also spoke at the rally. There was Samaah Jaffer, a Muslim-Canadian writer for rabble.ca and Khelsilem, a Squamish activist who teaches the Squamish language at SFU. But the main criticism has been regarding the lack of representation on behalf of a number of different minority organizations. The awkward difference between representation and tokenization is impossible to ignore.
White feminism casts a large, unwieldy, and often compromising shadow. ShiShi Rose, an African-American activist based out of Brookyn, NY, wrote an open letter to the WMW “allies.” “Now is the time for you to be listening more, talking less, spend time observing, taking in media and art created by people of colour, researching, and unlearning the things you have been taught about this country.”
Zehra Naqvi, a UBC student, writer and Muslim activist in Vancouver, voiced a familiar concern. “They have no problem taking center stage, enjoying the role of playing the victim, and playing lip service to "end racism". Lets not forget it was middle-class white women that got Trump elected.”
Black Lives Matter Vancouver posted a statement on their website in response to the WMW the day before the rally. “Resistance is ongoing. It cannot be a one-time event where people in Vancouver congratulate themselves for minimal activism and return to watching and participating in systemic racism and oppression in Canada. Participating in a march does not absolve people’s complicity in structures that disproportionately harm women of colour, Indigenous women, queer and trans women of colour.”
True intersectionality has to do with the intersections of different marginalized identities. The number of searches tripled over the weekend for the term “intersectional feminism”, indication that perhaps this past weekend’s protests brought to the surface unfinished business in the arena of third-wave feminism. If it can spur important growth in the arena of activism and equality, it is better to lose a battle and win a war.