I participated in and covered the Women's March in Philadelphia yesterday. It was extraordinary, with crowds estimated at 50,000, 150% bigger than predicted. It was an amazing experience, participating in what I believe was one of biggest activist marches in Philadelphia history, and what is being described nationally, as the biggest collection of marchers in the history of the US.
I'm thanking Trump because it was clear that his frightening presidency, so evocative of the story Sinclair Lewis described in his novel, It Can't Happen Here, inspired millions of new activists to participate in their first protest activist march. It is notable that this march was not billed as anti-Trump nor as a protest march. It was framed as a march for Women's rights and justice.
What struck me more than anything else was how many of the march's attendees were multi-generational-- mothers bringing their daughters. Grandmothers bringing their grandchildren and daughters. Fathers bringing their children. This gives me great hope-- All these parents and children had a great experience at a peaceful march, which I believe will inspire them to engage in more activism.
So we have Donald Trump to thank for bringing out hundreds of thousands of new activists. Let's hope they view their participation in this march as the beginning of a new era in their lives, one which includes commitment to activism and making change happen.
Here's the link to an album of over 160 photos and videos I took at the conference.
And here are some samples:
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
Check out his platform at RobKall.com
He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)