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March Leaders Not Settling for High Turnout
By Elizabeth Williamson and Cameron W. Barr, washingtonpost.com April 27, 2004
Washington, DC -- The vast crowds leaving the March for Women's Lives on Sunday hadn't even boarded their buses before Eleanor Smeal was looking down the road.
"Even if we had a million people . . . we've got to inspire long-term, active commitment," Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority, a march sponsor, said backstage at the event. "Our idea from the start was to leave the next generation with something better."
Organizers say Sunday's march met a key goal: attracting huge numbers in support of abortion rights. But how successful are marches on Washington at turning a fine day on the Mall into lasting results?
A well-attended demonstration "builds enthusiasm, it builds energy, it builds a sense of, 'Oh, there are others out there,' which I think can be pretty powerful for those working in the trenches," said Lynn G. Barber, a historian at the California State Archives in Sacramento and the author of a book on Washington marches.
"Is it going to change President Bush's mind? No. Is it going to bolster people who are already pro-choice? . . . I think yes," she said.
Organizers say the march cost $3.5 million, paid for by sponsors that included the National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the Feminist Majority, the American Civil Liberties Union and new sponsors Black Women's Health Imperative and the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health.
The most successful mass protests focus on a single issue, the experts say. Abortion rights advocates, for instance, credit a similar rally 12 years ago for swaying a Supreme Court ruling on the matter. As much as organizers wanted to broaden their agenda on Sunday, many marchers said they turned up to defend legal abortion against what they said is a hostile administration.
Some other events of recent years -- the 1995 Million Man March, which sought to foster a sense of unity and responsibility among African American men, and the Million Mom March of 2000 against gun violence -- seemed fuzzier by comparison.
The results, too, were diffuse. The men's march generated a swell of strong emotion among its participants but was not tied to policy changes. Likewise, gun control advocates made little progress in the months after the moms' rally.
"They were pleading for child safety. It's a pretty broad thing," said Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) of the Million Mom March. "I think this one," he said, referring to Sunday, "had more velocity, ferocity."
Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown University and scholar of mass movements, said the broader events were attempts to "establish an issue" and were at least partially successful. They also brought together like-minded people who were, no doubt, inspired by the mass gatherings.
"People still want to have this great thrill that they are not alone," Kazin said.
Organizers intended Sunday's march to be nonpartisan, but there was little doubt among marchers that it was an anti-Bush rally. Volunteers took voter registrations and asked for donations, though figures on how many names and dollars were collected were unavailable yesterday, organizers said.
The traditional march on Washington, Barber said, is about being big, peaceful and part of the democratic process: "Walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, believing what you believe, looking at that Capitol . . . it never fails to inspire," said Kate Michelman, veteran activist and president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
But for at least three decades, some activists have been frustrated with what they see as a lack of results from this approach and have taken different paths. One example is the anti-globalization movement, whose partisans have mounted edgier, sometimes violent protests in the District and other cities around the world.
Such protesters "are disgusted by the democratic process and . . . want a totally different style of march," Barber said.
That works for a while, said Moises Naim, the editor of Foreign Policy magazine, "but it is not enough to denounce." The problem is that once activists start to espouse policy solutions and reforms, "you become boring." Indeed, Saturday's anti-globalization protests drew only a few thousand people.
The Supreme Court, in some ways the key institution of government on the abortion issue, has long been considered immune to the cries of protesters. Yet the antiabortion movement claims that one of its biggest marches succeeded in influencing that very institution.
Early in 1992, the Supreme Court voted to consider Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, a case that, in a divided court, constituted a challenge to Roe v. Wade.
"A lot of experts said we were Chicken Little," Smeal recalled. "And we said no, we know it's close."
The march in spring 1992 was one of Washington's largest. Organizers put the number of participants at 750,000; the National Park Service estimated that a half-million came.
Roe, according to the recently released papers of former Supreme Court justice Harry A. Blackmun, was poised for defeat. But in a last-minute switch, Reagan-appointed Justice Anthony M. Kennedy changed his vote, and abortion rights survived, 5 to 4.
"I believe the march had an impact on their decision making," Smeal said. "What happens in the street brings [these issues] home. It impacts the temper of the times."
Despite dozens of demonstrations demanding abortion rights before the original Roe decision, Blackmun said he initially didn't consider the decision a monumental one. In an oral history tape, Blackmun said the demonstrations and letter-writing campaigns protesting the decision convinced him that Roe was a necessary step in the emancipation of women.
"As the furor developed and [Roe's] integrity was attacked and upheld, certainly I came to that conclusion," he said. "I think it was a step that had to be taken."
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