Please enjoy my article & photos for the March/April 2017 edition of the
Loon Lake Times newspaper
Walk A While With Me Friend
The Women’s March Comes to Eastern Washington
Copyright ©2017, ElizaBeth Coira
In the brisk, early afternoon sunshine of Saturday, January 21, 2017 we gathered. We brought out our courage and homemade signs, we pinned on our hopes, and walked side-by-side. Some of us already knew one another as neighbors, co-workers, family, and friends. Some of us complete and utter strangers, were happy to share a moment in each other’s kind company. So many different, beautiful faces: women, men, children of all ages. It looked like America, the country I love, the country I’ve wandered… the country I’m proud to call my home.
We gathered in Chewelah, numbering 125 strong. We gathered in Spokane, 8-11,000 strong. We gathered across the United States. We gathered across planet Earth. We common people came together, for so many reasons, yet united… against the shadow of a tyranny, not fully revealed. But we know it, we hear it, we sense it, we feel it…the worrisome presence of a most unwelcome guest. So many of our ancestors have known it, have fought it; been used and abused, too as pawns. It is the game of the unscrupulous greedy lords, slithering charismatics, self-anointed kings. Can you feel the scraps being tossed at us…while the coffers of elite egos grow ever over-flowing?
Does that really feel like goodness? Does it make you feel at ease? Even at peace with a greater sense of order, justice, or higher being? Does the blame game found on early playgrounds, the bullying, belittling hold appeal in your heart? So many came out to march, to unite, because searching within, their answer is No.
Their answer is No to rule by fear. Their answer is No to control through chaos. Their answer is No to hateful rhetoric, designed to separate and subjugate us. Their answer is No to limiting our freedoms, based on the opinions of only a few. Their answer is No, we won’t forfeit our country, our great democracy of “we the people.”