Marching right along

 

 

Throughout history, people have participated in marches in order to achieve a specific goal. The longest march on record is the Long March in China, which lasted from October of 1934 to October of 1935.

The Long March was a military retreat by the Chinese Red Army and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from advancing Kuomintang forces during the Chinese Civil War, occurring between October 1934 and October 1935. About 100,000 troops retreated from the Jiangxi Soviet and other bases to a new headquarters in Yan'an, Shaanxi, traversing some 10,000 kilometers (6,000 miles). About 8,000 troops ultimately survived the Long March.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March

 Throughout the 20^th century, there were a variety of marches in Europe and Asia.  In the United States, the best-known examples are the Bonus Army march of 1932, the march from Selma to Montgomery I in 1965, and the marches during the Vietnam War at various locations throughout the country.

The Bonus Army was a group of 43,000 demonstrators—17,000 veterans of U.S. involvement in World War I, their families, and affiliated groups—who gathered in Washington, D.C., in mid-1932 to demand early cash redemption of their service bonus certificates. Organizers called the demonstrators the Bonus Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.), to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Forces, while the media referred to them as the "Bonus Army" or "Bonus Marchers". The demonstrators were led by Walter W. Waters, a former sergeant.

Many of the war veterans had been out of work since the beginning of the Great Depression. The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 had awarded them bonuses in the form of certificates they could not redeem until 1945. Each certificate, issued to a qualified veteran soldier, bore a face value equal to the soldier's promised payment with compound interest. The principal demand of the Bonus Army was the immediate cash payment of their certificates.

On July 28, 1932, U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the veterans removed from all government property. Washington police met with resistance, shot at the protestors, and two veterans were wounded and later died. President Herbert Hoover then ordered the U.S. Army to clear the marchers' campsite. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded a contingent of infantry and cavalry, supported by six tanks. The Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned.

A second, smaller Bonus March in 1933 at the start of the Roosevelt administration was defused in May with an offer of jobs with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) at Fort Hunt, Virginia, which most of the group accepted. Those who chose not to work for the CCC by the May 22 deadline were given transportation home. In 1936, Congress overrode President Roosevelt's veto and paid the veterans their bonus nine years early.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army

Probably the most successful March of the 20^th century was the march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965, in large part because the attack on the marchers by local police as widely televised.

The first march took place on March 7, 1965, led by figures including Bevel and Amelia Boynton, but was ended by state troopers and county posse men, who charged on about 600 unarmed protesters with batons and tear gas after they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the direction of Montgomery. The event became known as Bloody Sunday. Law enforcement beat Boynton unconscious, and the media publicized worldwide a picture of her lying wounded on the bridge. The second march took place two days later but King cut it short as a federal court issued a temporary injunction against further marches. That night, an anti-civil rights group murdered civil rights activist James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston The third march, which started on March 21, was escorted by the Alabama National Guard under federal control, the FBI and federal marshals (segregationist Governor George Wallace refused to protect the protesters). Thousands of marchers averaged 10 mi (16 km) a day along U.S. Route 80 (US 80), reaching Montgomery on March 24. The following day, 25,000 people staged a demonstration on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol.

The violence of "Bloody Sunday" and Reeb's murder resulted in a national outcry, and the marches were widely discussed in national and international news media. The protesters campaigned for a new federal voting rights law to enable African Americans to register and vote without harassment. President Lyndon B. Johnson seized the opportunity and held a historic, nationally televised joint session of Congress on March 15, asking lawmakers to pass what is now known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He enacted it on August 6, removing obstacles for Blacks to register en masse. The march route is memorialized and designated as the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches

(As Barry McGuire reminded us in 1965, marches alone can’t bring integration)

(622) Barry McGuire - Eve Of Destruction - YouTube)

 Starting in the late 1890’s, there were also numerous strikes in America – but that is a topic for another time.

Since January 20, there have been NUMEROUS protests across the country in response to Trump’s ill-advised executive orders – and we have attended two of them so far.

(Oddly enough, there is a European connection to the domestic protests. Trump’s orders closely follow Project 2025, which is modeled after Victor Orban’s Hungary, but even there, protests have recently started against Orban’s authoritarian leadership. Orban, by the way, has gone to at least two meetings of CPAC here, and Tucker Carlson has done a couple of shows in the country)

Hungary’s populist prime minister Saturday vowed to rid his country of those he claims work for the interests of foreign powers, saying in a conspiracy theory-laden speech that his right-wing government will eliminate a global “shadow army” that serves the European Union and a “liberal American empire.”

Meanwhile, tens of thousands gathered in central Budapest in a show of strength against the long-serving prime minister, and in support of a new political force that aims to bring an end to Orbán’s rule and his economic system in elections next year.

The dueling demonstrations, which coincided with a national holiday commemorating Hungary’s 1848 revolution against the Habsburg Empire, came as the Central European country struggles with an inflation and cost of living crisis that have helped fuel growing dissatisfaction with Orbán and his autocratic style of governance.

https://apnews.com/article/hungary-orban-crackdown-media-ngo-38776560a2edf5948482dd4839461411

(The link below details how Orban has gone from being a moderate leader to an authoritarian ruler):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Orb%C3%A1n

The March from Selma to Montgomery covered a total of 53 miles.

A more ambitious March is planned by a group that we don’t think about often – the Quakers.

 https://tucson.com/life-entertainment/nation-world/faith-values/article_12394807-a8ea-54c1-beb7-04386bbbb070.html#tracking-source=home-entertainment

 A group of Quakers is marching more than 300 miles from New York City to Washington, D.C., to demonstrate against the Trump administration's crackdown on immigrants.

The march extends a long tradition of Quaker activism. Historically, Quakers were involved in peaceful protests to end wars and slavery, and support women's voting rights in line with their commitment to justice and peace.

More recently, Quakers sued the federal government earlier this year over immigration agents' ability to make arrests at houses of worship.

Organizers of the march say their protest seeks to show solidarity with migrants and other groups that are being targeted by President Donald Trump's administration.

"It feels really daunting to be up against such critical and large and in some ways existential threats," said Jess Hobbs Pifer, 25, a Quaker and march organizer who said she felt "a connection" to the faith's long history of activism.

"I just have to put one foot in front of the other to move towards something better, something truer to what Quakers before us saw for this country and what people saw for the American Experiment, the American dream," she said.

 Their goal is to walk south from the Flushing Quaker Meeting House — across New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Pennsylvania — to the U.S. Capitol to deliver a copy of the "Flushing Remonstrance" — a 17th century document that called for religious freedom and opposed a ban on Quaker worship.

Quakers say it remains relevant in 2025 as a reminder to "uphold the guiding principle that all are welcome."

"We really saw a common thread between the ways that the administration is sort of flying against the norms and ideals of constitutional law and equality before the law," said Max Goodman, 28, a Quaker, who joined the march.

"Even when they aren't breaking rules explicitly," he said, "they're really engaging in bad faith with the spirit of pluralism, tolerance and respect for human dignity that undergirds our founding documents as Americans and also shows up in this document that's really important in New York Quaker history."

A Quaker history of resistance

The Religious Society of Friends — best known as the Quakers — originated in 17th century England.

The Christian group was founded by George Fox, an Englishman who objected to Anglican emphasis on ceremony. In the 1640s, he said he heard a voice that led him to develop a personal relationship with Christ, described as the Inner Light.

Fox taught that the Inner Light emancipates a person from adherence to any creed, ecclesiastical authority or ritual forms.

Brought to court for opposing the established church, Fox tangled with a judge who derided him as a "quaker" in reference to his agitation over religious matters.

Two presidents were Quakers – Herbert Hoover and Rickard Nixon, but neither one of them followed their religion closely in adult life.

It’s impossible to determine how successful the Quaker march or the protests organized by 50501 will have on Trump’s plans, but most of his plans have been defeated in court so far – and that is a good thing.