Come Saturday, January 21st, over a million proud women will flood the streets of Washington D.C. to protest the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump.

The Million Women's March on Washington is an independently-organized creation of grassroots activism. Born out of one frustration as expressed via Facebook, it is now a fully-fledged movement. wide will hop on buses at 6 am, and middle-aged book clubs, gay couples, church youth groups, nuclear families, high school teachers, teenage activists, bipartisan lawyers, engineers, waitresses, cops, CEOs, and college students by the thousands will catch flights from across the country, side-by-side with people they've never met, and scrap together cardboard signs in this exceptionally American moment.

Recalling parallels to the eras of the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, Women's Suffrage, and the many other examples of America's rich historical tradition of activism in the streets, every person who will march marches for a complexity of reasons only they can explain.

I cannot speak for their reasons, but I can speak for mine.

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I march because I can.

I march for the women who marched before me so that I may have these rights, and I march in their honor, and to preserve their tireless work.

I march for the people of the future, that they may not inherit such a toxic, violent rhetoric.

I march against the violent rhetoric of Trumpism, and I march against the rise of a leader elected with fascist ideologies- I march because this is not an issue for politics, Republicans, or Democrats, this is an issue of human rights.

I march because Trump and what he stands for insults those rights, and he threatens the foundations of justice and hope which I believe this country stands for and aspires to be.

I march because Donald Trump is not my president, and I refuse to acknowledge the rise of such a man as normal. I refuse to accept him as my diplomatic surrogate before the world, as he does not stand for me. I refuse to acknowledge him as a role model for my children, because he is a man of violence and aggression.

He is a man who mocks the sick and disabled, then gets away with it;

he is a man who sexually assaults women, and when they come forward, threatens to sue them, and gets away with it;

he is a man who wants to overturn my right to reproductive freedom fought for by my feminist grandmothers in the 60s and 70s, and thinks he will get away with it;

who would refer to some of the greatest minds of this generation as "pieces of ass;"

who would implement openly racist legislation and seek to destroy the tenets of religious freedom in this country, and seek to 'register' free human beings like cattle for their beliefs;

a man who refers to an entire population of hardworking people, perhaps the hardest-working, as subhuman, and slurs the proud people of Mexico;

who insults and demonizes immigrants, who are themselves the True America in its original form;

who despises those who are gay, transgender, lesbian, queer, or non-binary;

a man who steps on those who are weak, or any who are unlike him;

a man who was once on trial for racist policies in his private business enterprise for refusing to serve Black Americans;

a man who fondled children at beauty pageants and walked into their dressing rooms;

a man who is the incarnation of greed;

a man with no policy whatsoever but sheer ambition to "win" and war;

a man who thinks "bomb the sh"t out of 'em" is an acceptable thing for a national leader to say;

a man who has no education or training in leading a nation, nor in navigating foreign policy whatsoever;

a man who openly aligns himself with his own financial interests over the foreign policy interests of the country he now wants to represent;

a man who allies himself with America's enemies and does not attend National Security Briefings;

a man who does not listen to the Pentagon or the CIA;

a man whose campaign staff is comprised of a racist propaganda media head, an Exxon Mobil CEO, and three members of Goldman Sachs;

a man who shows us that the oligarchy is no longer one of extension behind closed doors, where private interests bribe politicians, but that we now have no proxy politicians, and the private interests themselves have openly taken the seat;

a man who threatens the press when they publish unfavorable opinions about him and seeks to silence comedians who mock him;

a man who bears the trappings of fascism without complaint, and who seems to find them permissible;

a man who does not seem to comprehend the way a presidential leader must conduct themselves, nor how to govern in any way;

a man that is, by counts of experience, by counts of character, by counts of scandal, by counts of crime, by counts of anything, unequivocally unfit to serve;

a man who is not my president, and in case you have not noticed, will not be yours, which leaves me to wonder which vapid tremor of temperament will sit in our presidential seat day-to-day;

I march because, if such a leader as this man is to rise within my generation, I cannot rest easy in my grave knowing I did not do everything within my power to stop him.

I march because, if Donald Trump will rise to power, I refuse to treat his inauguration- the crowning of a pig and a buffoon, a tragic date for the history of our country and the world order itself, and a terrifying date of trauma and genuine fear for the subjugated and oppressed, whom he has declared his enemies- I refuse to treat this as in any way remotely normal.

I march because I cannot sit still and do nothing.

I march because, if my generation will let this happen, then God forbid I sit silently by while it does. God forbid I do not kick and scream and march and fight and speak out every way I can against it. I march because I have no choice. Every fiber in my being commands it. I march because I could not live with myself if I didn't.

If I must look back on this day in the future and the rise to power of this man, God forbid I remember having stayed silent. I cannot explain that to my grandchildren. So if I must be present for this chapter in history, I will not simply be a witness, I will be a participant.

I will engage in the dialogue, I will march in the streets, I will speak the truth, I will write the real news, I will fight to protect the oppressed, I will defend those who cannot defend themselves, and I will defend the planet and the children of this planet who will inherit our history long after our politics have died.

History is written by everyday people, and I will hold the pen in hand now, Donald Trump, and so will my sisters and brothers, because this is our America, and this is our planet, and this is our legacy, and if any one man's rise aspires to destroy that, in the name and honor of the women who paved the way before us, their spirits, and those of all fighters, march through us now, and you will find that this proud legacy will not go down without a fight.