Justice was never going to be easy. It wasn’t even going to be merely hard. Justice is the impossible dream, the stuff of fantasies like Neverland and El Dorado and Narnia. Nonetheless, justice fades only when we forget it’s a journey, not a destination. Marching on the road to justice is like orienteering with a map where every direction forward has a marker reading, “Here be Monsters.” Still, we march.
When women marched in 2017, it was with defiance and pride generated from decades of progress toward equality and respect. Eight years later, the skies are darker, the uncharted routes more treacherous and threatening; today, the dark lords are looking down from satellites instead of gilded towers. Women have been reminded once again, “A woman’s work is never done.”
It’s a hard lesson, but then it’s always been hard. The irony of the myth of blind justice is just that: it’s a myth, an ideal, a goal too seldom realized in the hard context of bought governments, bought judges, and bought media.
In Modesto, the 2025 Women’s March was on January 18. It was quieter and smaller than the one in 2017. Some will think the diminished numbers mark a sign of defeat, but then resolve has always been quieter and more durable than anger.
Resolve stitches up the ragged ends of loss into new beginnings. Resolve skirts the peaks and valleys of ire and vengeance; it pioneers a different topography.
Resolve is a sober reckoning with the obdurate and seemingly immovable barriers of high walls, locked gates and barred doors. It flows instead of flares. Resolve rises slowly, even against the downward pressure of prejudicial power, inherited inertia and embalmed tradition.
The political history of women in the United States includes getting the right to vote over 100 years after it was bestowed on white males with property. It includes a movement toward true equality that began gaining force only sixty years ago. It includes the realization that definitions of “merit” and “legal” and “rights” are nearly always made from on high and nearly always come with hidden agendas.
More than anything, resolve includes the knowledge that justice isn’t about gender, or race, or class or places of origin. Justice is that universal value linked inextricably to equality under the law. Those who achieve higher ground only to find there are taller mountains ahead keep climbing. They march.
Today, the near horizon seems filled by a formidable army that could dominate the future and defer justice far beyond our lifetimes. See that army within the context of deep resolve and it’s only another would-be king and his mercenary court, a host of vainglorious pretenders attended by servile opportunists eager to debase themselves in extravagant demonstrations of fealty and craven tribute.
Meanwhile, justice has mustered its own army. Recruits with names like Greta, Alexandria, and Jacinda are marching forward and upward “on the road to glory, where the story never ends.” They are young and strong and carry with them the courage, the wisdom, and the history of those who’ve gone before. They are not going back.
Exactly for what were they marching?
I was wondering the same thing. Women’s rights usually includes the desire to kill unborn children.
We have lost some of the rights for which we and so many others have fought. If we are not human, we have really nothing to lose.
Eric, this is your best work yet. Cogent, concise, all that as usual, but the language here really soars. This would not be out of place from a pulpit, a courtroom, or Congress. Keep up the good work and fight the good fight!
Thank you Jim. It is the people who march who soar and lead us all to a better place. More to come.
1. Will women march to demand to be required to sign up for “selective service” like men are required too, in the name of equality?! To be honest women have killed millions of babies through abortion, I would consider it a holocaust of epic proportions (the American holocaus). With this in mind I feel that these women should be sent to the front lines in the name of equality since a high percentage of them are already killers.
2. Since women want the right to abortion, “my body my choice”, will women support a man’s right to abort financial responsibilities if they do not want the child, “my wallet, my choice”… in the name of equality?!
3. Will women march to require paternity testing of all babies at birth to positively identify the biological parents ensuring an end to paternity fraud?! Will women march to ensure those that commit paternity fraud will receive prison time for their lies?!
4. Will women march to ensure when false rape or “me too” accusations are brought up & found to be false through evidence, the false accuser will receive harsh punishment for their lies?!
We can’t have the current Feminism where women march/fight for so called positive rights that only benefit them, yet deny the rights of the opposite sex, that’s not equality… it’s more in the line of F3minists superiority.
I find it interesting that Women fight for so-called liberation from the Patriarchy so they can do whatever they like yet still demand men adhere to Traditional social norms such as…. the Man should pay all the bills, men should pay for the first date, men should protect & provide, men should go to war etc…. It seems women want it all, have their cake & eat it too… Women want all the benefits or advantages of a situation without accepting the associated downsides… basically modern F3minism in a nut shell… ridiculous…
As for the pay gap… lets not forget when Women complained they were paid less, then when Google reviewed its own pay structure recently, it yielded an unexpected result: It was underpaying more men than women for doing similar work, the company revealed in a blog post published Monday.Mar 4, 2019
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/03/04/google-asked-about-pay-equity-learned-it-was-mostly-underpaying-men/
Surely Mr. Hansen, you don’t really think that because there is a pay gap that favors women at Google the pay gap overall favors women do you? That’s like saying because farmer John’s beef is infected all beef is infected. Isolated examples don’t constitute an entire class theorem Mr. Hansen. Surely you know this.
Trying to get my reply in, so if this is a repeat, my apologies.
To all present and future activists, please don’t bury your marches at Graceada Park. You need to get OUT there , like busy intersections. Thousands will see your message and your energy. Marching around a park means no one sees you . Isn’t the purpose of activism to engage , inform and ultimately change public opinions? How will that be achieved marching around a quiet park??
S Hansen,
Wow! Were you involved in a paternity suit? Or maybe more than one women has told you “No!”
If you are married I hope she has dinner on the table when you get home.