Marching alone doesn’t bring change, but it creates the opportunity to connect with people who believe the same thing. It validates an understanding that things needs to change. Change is rarely easy, and it’s rarer still that it is pleasant for all involved, but validating the need for it is the first step in making it possible. Connecting with people helps to make sure the change that comes is the one that can actually improve the system for everyone. It’s a starting point, it’s a recruitment instrument.

It’s vitalizing as well. Walking enhances health, shouting and chanting is means of controlling breath. It’s a release that if denied suffocates our energy. It is breath of fresh air for the revolutionary spirit. We humans are social creatures who need validation of our beliefs from other people. Marching gives us that. Marching builds our mental and physical health.

Someone who feels completely powerless, and is disgusted by the current system may show up. They may end up connecting with a local org. That may lead to them doing more, as connecting with people often does. The constant attacks on our sense of agency over our own lives make many of us blind to the possibility that we may have control over how we can affect the system. Marching restores some small sense of agency.

The show of courage that is often displayed at marches spreads. The show of power that the people in Minneapolis displayed instructions people across the country in the way of resistance.

We are all drops in tide that can stop the madness, but only if we come together. We can be a flood that washes away the injustice and abuse, but only if we come together. We can break the dam built by the forced exchange of money for survival, but only if we come together.