Sunday, January 22, 2017

Enough!



This is a dueling blog with my husband journalist Rick Adams 
http://lovinglifeineurope.blogspot.fr/
includes video

For almost 50 years I've been arguing for human rights, (emphasis on women) and peace via phone calls, letters and marches.

I've marched in Boston, Paris, Geneva, Bern and yesterday in Montpelier, France with my husband and a friend for women's rights, a battle that long ago should have been won.

It was a pro-march even if triggered by an anti-Trump reaction to his policies.

Argelès was raining when we left for the two-hour drive. By Narbonne, the sun was shining. When we reached Montpelier, it could have seem like a normal outing with a good lunch.

There was a certain thrill to see a statue of Jean Jaures, a spokesman for social justice and peace, assassinated 23 Nov. 1924.

We were early at the meeting place and thought, only a few hundred people but by the time the march began it was almost 2,000.


Black and red were the colors, but some were in costume. The demonstrators were French and American. I chatted with many from both countries. Some, including the French had made their pussy hats, reinforcing we live in a world as much as a town, state, country.

Ideas, hopes, dreams are international.

The messages were the same.

Reproductive, gender, civil rights not necessarily in that order. The order depended on the person.


My husband was given a white arm band and asked to be one of the people who marked the boundaries of the march.

There was a march song about no more acceptance of unequal status using the symbol of a cat.

We started. As far as we could tell, it went on for a minimum of five blocks thru the historic centre of the city, the 8th largest in France. March was the wrong word--amble or shuffle would be better because the street was sardine-crowded.

Back home at night I watched the news of the marches in my home city of Boston and elsewhere around the country and the world. Women (and men) who believe in rights and know I am not alone.

What next?

Keep the momentum going.