Minnesota women bring their voices, concerns to Washington
She lives in the nation's capital and works for the federal government, but Minnesota native Maria Brun still considers Minneapolis home. And this week, home is a little closer than usual.
Brun's putting up three women from Minnesota at her apartment, part of a contingent of several busloads of Minnesotans taking part in Saturday's Women's March on Washington. She doesn't know any of them, but that's OK. She said pretty much everyone she knows has someone staying with them, intending to protest.
The march is being billed as the largest protest against President Donald Trump. But interviews with some who plan to march show it's not purely about politics.
Brun, for instance, said her reason for taking part in the event is that she's a victim of sexual assault. "I'm marching so that people like me have a voice and so that we're not shamed and we feel more empowered and we don't have to feel scared."
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Minnesotan Halla Henderson's father immigrated to the United States from Eritrea and her grandmother from Lebanon. Trump, she added, fanned flames of racism to attract support as a candidate. Because of that she worries she'll have to do even more to head off prejudice.
"As a person of color and as a woman I've always been very aware that it's always going to be a little bit harder for me," said Henderson, 23. "You have to work a little harder."
At first, following the election, Henderson said she wanted to march in Washington because she was angry, but she added that her reasons have changed. Now Henderson says she's doing it because she wants to be involved with something bigger than herself. She wants to organize and work with other people to improve the country.
"It gives us a chance to really start a movement," she said. "I think the march is a moment, and I think what happens after the march is going to be incredibly important."
That's exactly what former state DFL Rep. Betty Folliard wants to hear.
"To me it's exciting because it feels like the 1960s all over again, that people have awakened and women, particularly, are not going to take it anymore," said Folliard.
Trump's election scared then infuriated many women who are now directing their energy toward turning around complacency, she added.
"Change can take years, decades," she said. "It took 100 years for women to get the vote and we still don't have equal rights after 240 years."
The Saturday march is the beginning of a movement, changes that will empower all marginalized people, not just women," said Gloria Everson, Minnesota chair of the Women's March on Washington.
"For me, it is that a government of the people, by the people, for the people should look like the people. And right now it doesn't," said Everson.
It's important that the women's march movement not be framed as an anti-Trump effort, she added.
"He is not the problem. It's these systemic issues in government, in society that are the problem, and we have to act against injustices," she said. "If you say, 'I'm anti-Trump.' Well, why does someone who's pro-Trump have any reason to listen to you whatsoever? If you say 'I'm anti-injustice,' I bet we have some common ground."