you guys feel about some of the larger issues that seem to be co-opting? The main issue is about women's rights and women's freedom. How do you feel about it being co-opted by some constituents like men, for example? Totally disagree with the fact that men have hijacked really our movement. And this Trump thing is just a side issue. We have to look at the whole global picture. We

are from Swaziland in Swaziland. Swaziland doesn't support women. So what Trump has done is the same thing that Swaziland is doing. Women don't have rights. That's why we are coming to support this.

How do you feel about some of the other issues kind of creeping in on a

march for women? It's not right because it will be our day trying to express ourselves at that day. It shouldn't happen. In

March of 1971, Boston-based feminist group Bread and Roses occupied a Harvard-owned building at 888 Memorial Drive in Cambridge for 10 days, demanding affordable housing, equal pay, and free health and child care. The occupation resulted in the establishment of the Cambridge Women's Center, the longest continuously operating community women's center in the United States. The following song, Battle Hymn of the Women, was written by Bread and Rose's member Meredith Tax.

My eyes have seen the glory of the flame

of women's rage, kept smoldering for centuries, now burning in this age. We no longer will be prisoners in that same old gilded cage. That's why

we're marching on. Move on over or we'll move on over you. Move on over or we'll move on over you. Move on over over or we'll move on over you. For women's time has come. Expected us to change ourselves with every passing style. Said the only work

for women was to clean and type and file. That's why we're marching on. Move

on over or

we'll move on over you. Move on over or we'll move on over you. Move on over or we'll move on over you for women's time has come. It is we who've done your cooking, done your cleaning, kept your rules. We gave birth to all your children and we taught them in your schools. We kept the system running but we're laying down our tools for we are marching on.

Move on over

or we'll move on over you. Move on over or we'll move on over you. Move

on over or we'll move on over you. For women's time has

come. You think that you can buy us off with crummy wedding rings. You never pay us half the profit that our labor brings. Our anger eats into us, we no longer bow to kings, for we are marching on. Move on

over

or we'll move on over you. Move on

over or we'll move on over you. Move on over or we'll move on over you. For women's time has

come. We'll sing a battle song. We marched for liberation and we're many thousands strong. We'll build a new society. We've waited much too long. Now we are marching on.

Over our will move on over you. Move on over our will move

on over you. For women's time has come.

Here now are interviews WLRN correspondent Sarah was able to have with several Radfem marchers who attended events in both Washington, D.C. and Seattle.

I'm here with Bailey, who marched in Seattle. So, Bailey, what are your thoughts on the decision to make the Women's March in Seattle silent?

Ultimately, I found it incredibly offensive, considering the climate in which we find ourselves with our president, Mr. Trump, the Royal Cheeto. This is the opposite of the time for silence. What

was your personal experience when you actually did march? I understand that you tried to start a chant, and can you tell us what happened, and what was the chant? We did a few of them, as simple as My

Body, My Choice, your classic feminist march chants, right? So it's an intricate story, sort of a continuum of experience. And I would like to preface with a dream that I had a month prior to the march, in which I was in the dream with the women that I was with at the march, and I couldn't stop vomiting. And I remember in the dream that I was trying to prove to the people around me that I was more upset about something than they were. And at the march, this same exact energy is what moved through me. I felt like my soul was being ripped out of my body and I felt completely alone, despite the fact that I was surrounded by the people that I love the most, these women, and thousands of people, I felt like I was going to lay down and die in the middle of the street. When we started this chant, I actually had an older woman come up to me and say, it's a silent march, silly. And I felt that feeling like I was going to throw up my heart. It was physically painful to have an older woman silence me. And I think there were people around us who were laughing at us a little bit because we were channeling anger, whereas the people around us were treating this occasion as if it were a parade. And I actually witnessed a lot of people experiencing joy. And I thought that that was really inappropriate because this was not, by any stretch of my imagination, supposed to be a joyous occasion. This, to me, should have been a display of, like, we are angry, and we are not going to live in this world and be controlled by this man, these men. And I think that this march, a positive that could be said about it, helped me to define what complacency means and what it looks like to me. And definitely treating this occasion as a parade as anything but what it should have been was complacency. And I actually almost didn't have the opportunity to go and was able to go to the march. And I would still say that I feel as if I was meant to because it reawakened this righteous anger that I hadn't experienced in a really long time. And that feeling of feeling like I was going to throw up my heart, like I was going to lay down and die. of the women in our group later told me that it was important for them to witness that because it was righteous anger, because it was an expression of what we should have been experiencing and communicating to the greater world. Diana

Kraft is a radical lesbian feminist who marched in Washington, D.C. I

was marching in a group, an organized group of women from around the country called Bunch of Dykes, and it's a group of lesbians who formed in response to Steve Bannon's remarks about something like all women who go to women's colleges or a bunch of dykes or something. One thing that was affirming about marching in that group is the response that we received from the marchers around us. I think it's well known that that was the largest mass demonstration ever organized in the United States history in D.C. And it was massive. Like, I have no idea what Washington, D.C. like because I was in a sea of people. And to walk around with our pro-lesbian messaging, our banner and our posters, and to be chanting things like, the dykes are here, the dykes are here, lesbians are everywhere, we don't care what your gender is, men cannot be lesbians. We were met with a lot of support from people around us and a lot of people joining in. So what it looked like was a sea of pink because of those pussy hats and mostly women. There were men but it was mostly women. It was very much women's space and there was a feeling of solidarity and I think something that was even more exciting for me than the actual march was in our journey to get to the march through DC using public transportation and moving through the city toward the gathering point is the sense of camaraderie and solidarity with all of the women we encountered who were clearly also headed to the march. reel it backward in time just a little bit because I came from the west coast to go to DC and as soon as I started my travel process by plane I started to get a sense of the massive descent of women on the capital because I would get on planes that were 98% women and 80% of them were wearing pink pussy hats. I would move through airports and I would just see masses of women in these hats which were very visibly identifiable. that we were all in it together. Like women who didn't know one another were approaching one another, introducing themselves, talking about where they were from and what they went through to get there and what they were excited about for the march and showing each other their signs. And it was just the largest mass of solidarity among women that I've ever seen. And I've been a radical feminist activist for over 20 years. And this was the greatest, most galvanizing physical gathering that I've ever been a part of. I was dismayed to see that one march, the Seattle March, changed the name of their event. They spelled women with an X. I'm not sure why. I mean, I have an idea, but it didn't make sense. So to see that kind of splintering happen and that kind of immediate dilution of why this march was called and what it was in response to, which was the open misogyny of Trump and his supporters and wanting to take a stand as women, as a sex class, and then seeing how immediately things were being watered down and like, no, we're not women, we're everybody. This isn't just about women, it's about everybody, which we can't effectively organize around our shared oppression if we can't name who we are and what our experience is. Did

you read any of the materials that the DC organizers put out? And if you did, what were your thoughts on things like their platform? I

have a critic I have a lot of criticism of their platform because I am a lesbian and a radical feminist and um their position on prostitution um which they call sex work and their refusal to specifically name the source of women's oppression, which is men, and male violence, and male supremacy and domination on the global scale, is frustrating. There was a direct linkage of male violence and male supremacy and patriarchy to the plight of women, which is why this march was organized, But then to create these materials that refuse to acknowledge that is really a lost opportunity to actually move forward with a women's liberation agenda. Because counter to common belief, women have not achieved liberation. Like we are still living in male domination and that plays out across economic circumstances, that plays out across safety issues, health and wellness, our ability to move freely through space, our ability to access resources, education, employment. It's everything all the time. We do not have freedom from sexual abuse and exploitation from the time we were children until the time we die. We have a lot to be fighting for, so to arrange this march so that everybody feels good feels like a betrayal, frankly. One thing, again, because I have some friends who live in the Seattle area, so I'm aware of that march a lot more than other marches around the country, besides DC, of course, is they actually called for a silent march. So, all right, think about this. So the history of male domination is to silence women and take away our platform for speech. So these geniuses decide to arrange this women's march in response to Trump's inauguration. And first of all, we're going to misspell it. And not in some like, you know, radical feminist, like, you know, W-O because we are divesting from malehood or whatever. But the ex. Like, what the fuck does that even mean? And then they insisted that the march, or at least the bulk of the march, was going to be silent. Silent. We are outraged and we will not say a fucking word about it. Instead, we are gonna carry on in a parade through the streets of Seattle, smiling at one another with all of our male partners around us. And we're not gonna say a damn word about anything. But just know, just know, we're walking through these streets and we're Wem-exing and we you know we have something to say we're not gonna say it but just know that we do have something to say and maybe at some point when it's not offensive to you we will at some point we'll'll say something. But right now, right now, we really feel that silence is best. And that's fucked up. That is fucked up. So that's how I feel about that.

Alexandra Torrey is a young radical feminist who attended the march in DC. The

whole day felt charged. I felt a lot of strength from the women around me. It was less of a march and more of a shuffle. There were so many people. I felt chaos. I felt too many voices speaking at once, all asking for different things. I felt disarray and confusion. I felt hope and purpose. I felt lost and found. I felt disillusionment and white ignorance. I felt pride and self-righteousness. I felt solidarity and fear. I felt too many energies around me to keep track of. At first, after it ended, I felt like it was a starter pistol, a bang felt and heard around the world, the beginning of the end. Later, I felt it was a photo op. Many people had come to be another body counted, not to march for anything in particular, but showed up for the head count and the Instagram. Then I felt its failures, the lack of self-awareness and empathy among white women that fed further division and upheld oppression. The march is what you make of it. There were so many realities there, such different walks of life joined together under the threat of tyranny. Reading about others' participation, the different encounters, helps me form it into a cohesive experience. I felt it home among my friends and among the women I marched with. One thing I didn't feel was angry. I mean, there is a constant hum of it that generates on its own within me throughout the day, but besides that, I didn't feel its fire. I didn't feel anger around me either. There were lots of smiles, there was strength, there was passion. There was anger in some of the speakers I watched later, but the people I walked with, next to, and through, it was relatively calm, peaceful. I don't know if I'm disappointed by this. I think I'm somewhat brainwashed being inundated from birth with a culture that glorifies violence, self-sacrifice, that dramatizes the most mundane aspects of life. I didn't want or expect there to be conflict, but I also wasn't prepared to feel so safe. that there's a spirit of resistance and that people aren't willing to accept the maniac's orders. I absolutely am inspired to take more action, to engage in political organization. All in all, it was a beautiful experience. I loved marching with my friends, and I loved seeing so many women in one place with such pride in their bodies and such vocal indignation at the attack on them. I'm very grateful I was able to attend. Prez

N is the nickname of a young lesbian who marched in Seattle. So were people silent at the march when you were there? Absolutely

not. We were surrounded by floats, children screaming and yelling and having fun. And eventually when we started marching and we were marching through a neighborhood, there were women laughing. and as we got to the neighborhood, there was this one black lady and she had her house was just like on the side, like we were walking by her home. She had a giant speaker blasting a song from the top floor of her bedroom and every word in the song was fuck Donald Trump. And she was shouting, not my pussy, you won't grab my pussy Donald! And like shouting all these things and the crowd was totally into it and feeling her vibes and people were shouting, shouting, fuck Donald Trump! And it was just a really wonderful positive vibe and people were singing and just cheering and there was just people with megaphones posted on the sides of the streets, shouting about women's rights. We passed a group of young women holding a giant poster that said, you know, decriminalize the youth corrective system, you know, not having children in prisons and things like that, and they were shouting, and people were like, yeah, yeah, you're right, totally. It was not silent whatsoever. It felt like a march, but it also felt like a parade. It felt like a parade of women just like enjoying it and bouncing off of each other's energies and just loving it, you know, and loving each other. And the energy was teeming. And as we were waiting, we were getting news, 30,000, 60,000, 80,000, stretching six miles long. You can't see the end of the parade. The energy was just building. And so we were excited. This

is Women's Liberation Radio News. We now return to my conversation with Diana Craft for more of her analysis. Can you tell me your thoughts on marching in general as a women's liberation tactic? I

think that marching is important as a galvanizing force and as a way to come together in our physical bodies with one another and to feel what forward movement feels like in our bodies, especially in a world that is increasingly taking place in a virtual realm where people are more and more disembodied. I think coming together and occupying physical space is really important. That being said, the most important work is for us to be doing political organizing on a daily basis, including just building relationships with one another and doing consciousness raising and then organized direct actions. for resources, for you know the way women have always organized to create the resources that we need such as battered women's shelters and rape crisis centers and food and clothing distribution centers and childcare cooperatives and all of those things. So we need to be doing work all the time and that should be our focal point but we also need to celebrate sometimes and we need to feel the might and the power of what it's like when you have over a million women coming together in a space talking about women's liberation. It's exciting to be a radical feminist today because as a woman who is in my middle years at this point, I came into feminism in the early 90s. The climate has considerably changed since then. And what's inspiring right now is that I have been meeting so many radical feminists from your generation in their early 20s or even their late teens who are standing up and fed up with not just sexism as usual, which is what I've been fighting for all this time, but now the erasure of our ability to even identify ourselves as female and to name and describe the experience of being female in a patriarchal society that targets females and then meets out the practices of oppression through the female body. When that's the reality and we can't even identify ourselves as having female bodies or talking about the reality of having a female body, we're reaching this fever pitch of insanity as far as patriarchal oppression is concerned. And these young women are standing up and they're pissed. And that's what's exciting for me. There are so many women who are writing online and speaking out and organizing and creating groups and bringing out feminist theory that has been buried or the feminist theory that gets referenced in gender studies classes but only as a secondary, only through the secondary source of criticism of that feminist theory. And these women are seeking out the original words and seeing how radical it really is to demand autonomy, to demand boundaries, to demand full humanity and personhood for the female sex. And sex is an actual thing. All mammals have it. The transgender movement is really creating an entry point for many women to be radicalized. means to conflate gender stereotypes and biological sex and how that severely constricts the possibility for women's full humanity to be realized, let alone for women to be able to be safe. radical feminism, I think women need to talk to one another, especially women who are different from one another due to race and class and other circumstances.