A year ago today...

A year ago, WAAM’s maiden voyage reached the National Mall. A lot has changed over the last year – and not just the physical White House – and much has stayed the same. Authoritarianism has tightened, while our country is still starkly divided by ideology. Let me tell you now, this is NOT a newsletter about the midterms (but, yes, it is your responsibility to vote) and I’m tired of talking about impeachment (but, yes, get them out of DC). This is a simple WAAM check-in.

WAAM has been dormant all summer as our community undertakes deeply personal growth. From mid-life career changes and new jobs (I think there’s at least four of us, me included), to cross-country moves (welcome to the East Coast, you guys), to babies (little Lucy) and grandbabies, life marches forward. Sometimes it seems like activism takes a back seat to the bills, flat tires and middle-of-the-night baby bottles. Remember: if you are reading this, you still have that activism in you. When you listen to NPR on the way to work or even just (or not just) share pizza with your kids on a Friday night, that activism recharges. It recharges until you can march -- or protest outside a bank, or organize mutual aid supplies, or copy habeas corpus dockets, or thwart flock cameras -- again.

People have been asking when WAAM will march again. I wish I could tell you that we leave tomorrow, or even offer up a tentative date. There are so many people, organizations and communities vital to the march organizing. We are all getting our feet back underneath us after a whirlwind year. I promise we will march again in 2027. (If we decide on Spring, we’ll let you know ASAP!) We will march because WAAM isn’t concerned only with midterms and impeachment. We aren’t solely a reaction to the next atrocity. We are a community dedicated to uprooting authoritarianism and growing positive change centered on humanity.

This sounds lofty, but if you’ve marched with us, I think you’ve experienced this work. From sharing walking sticks, to the conservative coffee shop owner who welcomed us in Cecil County, the little church in Elsmere that always opens its doors so we can eat sandwiches in the basement, to the WAAM laughter and pranks (I AM FRED! for all you April marchers), we are building community. 

Currently our resistance is fractured between flavor (mainstream progressives, democratic socialists, even anarchists) and cause (immigration, environment, international affairs, Epstein files, bodily autonomy, voting rights, the list goes on). WAAM strives to bring all of these affinities together not in coalition, or even in assimilation, but into an ever-changing community. Only together will we have the strength, resolve, innovation and empathy necessary for the work ahead.

I’m going to end with the most important lesson I’ve learned from WAAM: building community is not easy. It takes a frightening amount of vulnerability to realize that no matter how hard you work, you depend on others. It’s humbling to admit that no matter how strong I am, there’s a spark in other people – a quality I struggle to name – that’s just as vital to my own life. When we lose that understanding, we lose our humanity. In an era of nonstop social media, unregulated AI and such deep fear of difference, we need our humanity more than ever.