THREAD
So my very first march on Washington, I was a kid. Our church (my parents were Socialist Civil Rights worker movement folks) sent buses to the Moratorium against Vietnam and it was the most people to ever march on Washington to date. No one stormed the Capitol.

My second march on Washington was the march for the ERA and I was a teenager and went with a bunch of older white and Black lesbians who were training me to be a good feminist. We all wore white like the suffragists and never stormed the Capitol.

My next few marches were for gay rights. We didn't storm the Capitol. I also was at a march against AIDS and even though Reagan Bush was killing us, we didn't storm the Capitol.

I attended the huge pro-choice anniversary of Roe v. Wade march where there were a lot of counter-protestors and we didn't beat anyone up and we didn't storm the Capitol.

I remember all those marches really clearly. They were incredibly powerful and meaningful. The feeling of solidarity with strangers came from shared commitment to a cause: peace, equal rights, an end to second class citizenship. No cults. No hate. No violence.