Off the sideline: Students, women, teachers embrace activism
Suddenly, America is on the march.
Saturday’s March for Our Lives, planned for Washington and hundreds of other locations, is just the most recent sign that an extraordinary number of Americans are taking to heart the old truism that democracy should not be a spectator sport.
In numbers not seen since the tumult of the 1960s and ’70s, multitudes are venturing off the sidelines and into the game in a remarkable surge of political and social activism. Their ranks include high school students angered by gun violence, teachers fed up with low pay, and women energized by a range of grievances — notably pervasive sexual harassment and the longtime dominance of men in political power.
The array of massive women’s marches in January 2017, primarily a backlash to Donald Trump’s election as president, served as prelude to the #MeToo movement, which caught fire in October and continues to this day as emboldened women call out men who have sexually mistreated them in workplaces ranging from Hollywood to state legislatures to symphony orchestras.