The 2018 Women's March on Colorado Springs

One year to the day from last year's inaugural march, multitudes of Colorado Springsians once again gathered downtown to make their voices heard loud and clear. I participated with Pat and our friend Rachael and it was freezing -- 24° F with wind gusts up to 40 MPH. I mean cold, cold, cold! Even so (and with a football final playoff game happening right smack in the middle of it), I estimate the turnout was a good two to three thousand hardy and determined people. A number of causes were represented, among them DACA, #MeToo, universal healthcare, climate change and the environment in general, equal rights, racism, science, the Russian investigation, and the personality and tweeting habits of the current occupant of the Oval Office. I took lots of pictures, but not as many as last year because the weather was far more inhospitable this time around, so we left earlier in the festivities before we could succumb to frostbite!

Weather aside, it was just as energizing as ever to be part of an enormous, motivated and purposeful group of people. I was pleasantly surprised by the huge turnout. We marched in a chanting throng from All Souls Unitarian Church to City Hall, a distance of eight blocks. As happened last year, the police resorted to closing down traffic lanes for us, as there were far too many people for the sidewalk. There was about half an hour of extremely energetic chanting and demonstrating at City Hall, then the crowd began to head back to the church. We were shocked to find that as we were walking back to where we started, there were still huge numbers of people making their way in the opposite direction!

Here's a little slide show I made with some of the moments I was able to capture. (It uses the same music as last year's slide show, sorry about that but my free time last night was limited!) It bears mentioning that if you happen to fall into the opposite camp on the aforementioned issues, this slide show will likely do nothing but irritate you, so you should probably skip it and come back to the blog tomorrow, when I will return to being pleasantly apolitical. 😉  Cheers!