I’m from Winchester, Massachusetts, where marches are an ornament of history. Marches, to me, have always been a thing of the past. It was just one of those quaint, old things that were done a long time ago — akin to sitting for paintings. However, over the course of the last year, that attitude has shifted. My hometown became more diverse and began to experience growing pains. Our town was a red dot in Massachusetts’ blue sea: When my family first moved there, we were one of maybe 10 Indian families in a town of over 15,000. Now, Indian and Chinese families have flocked to our small, less multicultural replica of Lexington, drawn by the top-tier schools’ rankings, and one out of 10 Winchester citizens are Asian, according to demographic data from Neighborhood Scout. 

Given these demographic changes, Winchester —  which was whiter than A4 paper — had some issues, to put it lightly. The “Winchester, MA Residents” page on Facebook — once a haven for fellow townspeople to post funny pictures of local turkeys and ask for recommendations for people to call for various housework jobs — descended into a hellscape of political spitefulness, bitter tirades and snide jokes. As the town became younger and more diverse, some of our older, whiter residents felt the need to reclaim their place on top of the hill. This would manifest as anything from vaguely Islamophobic emails, to jokes in poor taste about a local Japanese restaurant serving dog meat, to blatantly racist sentiment against the career and academically-driven Asian culture growing in town. The Winchester, MA Residents Facebook page itself became toxic indirectly: The younger and/or more ethnic families tended to be fairly liberal, as opposed to the older, white majority in Winchester, which has anchored it as the only red dot in the blue sea of Massachusetts. The same few agitators would bait the rest with their offensively inane opinions, almost always falling back to such high-class arguments like “Trump got more fat women to walk than Michelle Obama did in eight years,” or the ever-endearing idea that Black Lives Matter supporters are terrorists and anyone who doesn’t say, “All Lives Matter” is racist.  Then, without fail, a counterpart band of liberal keyboard warriors would rush in like white knights to do battle. After the dust settled, there would be nothing left: No meaningful dialogue, no good intentions and no hope. Perhaps that, in and of itself, was a win for the right-wing agitators. 

Despite the sour overall mood, many of my fellow students, as well as the younger adults, experienced the galvanization of spirit that the 2016 election and the time since has bestowed upon millions across America and overseas. Scores of my female classmates attended the Women’s March, and more and more, my friends and family began to actively seek out and contribute to conversations about race and gender.

In my life, there has been one glaring exception: my mother doesn’t march. From a statistical point of view, this would be extremely odd, as my mother is an Indian immigrant woman who has had to struggle and best her male colleagues to achieve her status today. She is liberal by any metric and is quick to make her voice heard and point known in any family argument or difficult conversation we may have. Nevertheless, my mother most probably will not march. Her reasoning is superficially similar to those antagonizers from before.

My mother has always stated that talking is easy but doing anything is much harder. She sees the marches as nothing more than cute displays of solidarity, to be quickly forgotten. For her, marching is easy; going in to operate and standing for thirteen hours at a time, slowly piecing together another person’s internal organs, is real work. My mother, like all of the Indian family friends that I’ve come to know as my various “aunties” and “meshos,” has the classic, almost Hollywood-stereotype origin story. She came from a different country, was an academic powerhouse, studied medicine in London and came to the United States with next to nothing. She’d work harder and longer than anyone else in order to get the same recognition as her white, male, older colleagues. She has grinded her whole life not only to get ahead but also to be the best version of herself. My mother always gives her all as a professor at the Harvard School of Medicine and as a surgeon at Cambridge Hospital, not out of some need to prove herself, but rather out of a need to be the best citizen she can be. As she puts it, “The best thing you can do in life is [to] be helpful to others. But to do that, you have to work hard for yourself and go up, because the higher you are, the more use you can be to others.”

When I asked why my mother doesn’t march, she drew upon that mantra. She said that she agreed with the marchers but that they’re not helping anybody the way she is — that making a sign and yelling is easier than buckling down and getting something done. I pressed further, somewhat skeptical of her line of thought. She continued by saying that marchers have causes she agrees with but aren’t working to further those causes. Indeed, even if the causes were just, the marches were protests and may come from a place of anger. Righteous or not, the marchers were doing less. Furthermore, if marchers would rather march than work, they have forfeited their credibility. For Ma, marching can show solidarity, which is appealing —  but to put it before work is to put rhetoric over action.

That conversation stuck with me ever since. In all honesty, it was quite troubling — after all, wasn’t my mother echoing those trolls who said that marchers are just unemployed brats whining for no reason, and thus the marches themselves had no intrinsic value? Was my own mother denouncing the Women’s March, all the change it was capable of bringing and the solidarity that it represented? After some time, I finally reached a conclusion. Today’s marches are fundamentally different from the marches of the past. The Women’s Marches, BLM protests and various other movements have undeniably shed light on America’s most persistent problems, and created a mirror so that our nation can uncomfortably ponder its past, present and future. The time may have come, however, for the marches to cease. BLM, in particular, has generated tremendous movements — but seems more and more each day to be overdue for a metamorphosis. The BLM groups and activists may have to change their approach — after all, many months of marching, vocal protests and revolutionary rhetoric culminated in a face-to-face with Barack Obama. In a telling sign, the demand for higher and higher officials’ attention, and the attention of the country, in ever-increasing amounts, culminated in one almost whiny statement — the activists felt they weren’t being heard. To this, then-President Obama simply said, “You are sitting in the Oval Office, talking to the president of the United States,” as stated in an April 23, 2016 New York Times article.  While the Women’s Marches have not yet reached this exhausted, transitional phase, it is fast approaching — the uncomfortable crossover time period where everyone’s attention has been successfully taken hostage — but movement seems to care less about working hard for concrete, if less exciting results, and more about taking up more of the national spotlight. There are realities to the problems of racism and sexism that need action, not attention. While the marches’ focused attention has helped to bring these problems into the public consciousness, attention cannot solve our nation’s ills alone. For my mother, committing to her career over public protests and marches was her equivalent of participating in the marches — always working at superhuman levels in a field that would have less-qualified, less-driven and less-upstanding men advance ahead of her. She believes that marching is fine, and she’d gladly participate, but never at the expense of work. For her, marching lends focus, but working and succeeding must be prioritized before it actually enacts progress. While it may not be the adage by which everyone will live their lives, for her, the best revenge is a life well-lived.