THIS Is What Comes After The Women’s March

February 9, 2017

Refinery29: THIS Is What Comes After The Women's March

by Stephanie Schriock 

Across the country, women are coming together in historic numbers to protect our values and stand up for what we know is right. We are marching, organizing, and speaking out. This is more than just a passing trend, and this movement isn’t about to get tired or fade away. In fact, we’re not going anywhere. The women who marched are about to start running for office, all across the country. 

Since Election Day, Emily's List has heard from more than 4,000 Democratic women across the country who are ready to run for office, including 500 women who attended a candidate training we hosted in Washington, D.C., the day after the women’s march — and we believe there are future senators, presidential candidates, and movement leaders among them. That's why, after spending more than 30 years working to elect more women to office, we're launching “Run to Win,” a national recruitment campaign aimed at helping Democratic women across the country run and win.

The surge in activity by women shouldn't be surprising, given what's been happening in Washington. In just his first few weeks in office, Donald Trump has launched an all-out assault on our core American values of fairness, equality, and opportunity. His top priorities and first actions as president, as we feared, have been enacting dangerous policies that weaken our national security and aim to roll back rights for countless Americans. 

From banning refugees and Muslims entering the country to reinstating the global gag rule to picking a Supreme Court nominee who will very likely seek to overturn Roe v. Wade, the rights and freedoms of women and families are under attack like never before. From his very first day in office, Donald Trump has put our core values as a nation at risk.

We believe that one of the best ways to get better policy and move the country forward is to elect Democratic women with diverse perspectives and life experiences to serve at all levels of our government. That's why we’re encouraging even more women to step up and make their voices heard through our “Run to Win” program. Don't think you need years of political experience or multiple degrees to run — you just need to be ready to bring your own voice and understanding to the table, gained from personal experience about what policies work and actually help women and families. 

And our response goes beyond pledging to run in the future. Women are also courageously leading the charge to defend us against the Trump administration’s unconstitutional executive orders, from the women attorneys general who’ve stood up to challenge the immigration order in Massachusetts and Minnesota; to the women lawyers who’ve turned out at airports across the country; to Sally Yates, the 27-year Justice Department veteran and former acting attorney general of the United States who ordered her staff not to defend Trump’s executive order on immigration and was summarily fired as a result.

So if you're not ready to run yourself, I challenge you to support a woman who can or is running, through our “Run to Win” program. 

It’s clear that we’ve never needed strong Democratic women leaders serving at every level of our government and in every state across our country more than we do today. Just think how differently our communities, our states, and our country would govern if we had an equal number of women and men at our decision-making tables. At Emily’s List, we won’t stop until we’ve made that vision a reality. 

First we marched. Now, we run.