South Lake Tahoe Women's March to celebrate diversity and highlight equality

As an estimated 200,000 people will join the Women's March on Washington Saturday, January 21, and hundreds of thousands of others march in their own towns across the country. Not to be left out, South Lake Tahoe will be having their own march to highlight issues important to the community, an event that organizers hope will attract a few hundred supporters.

Proclamation - We, the women of the Lake Tahoe Basin, walk with our partners, families and friends in unity with our sisters across the United States, to ensure our rights, our safety, our health and our community. We recognize that in our vibrant and diverse communities lie our strength and the strength of our country. This march is a first step in uniting our community and moving forward toward a more hopeful future. We stand together to recommit to our Constitutional values recognizing that we defend all people in our community and country. We work peacefully while recognizing there is no true peace without justice and equality for all.

"The atmosphere that was left at the end of the election was very divisive, and there was a need to respond to that in a positive way, in a way to unify the community under a common theme," said Norma Santiago, one of the organizers of the SLT Women's March. "Our strength lies in the diversity of our community and our country."

Local marchers will meet in the back parking lot of Hard Rock Lake Tahoe at 10:00 a.m. on January 21. At 11:00 a.m. they will leave the hotel and march along Highway 50 to Lakeview Commons. Once at the end there will be a program featuring community leaders and advocacy groups. Should the weather not be beneficial to an outdoor meeting a different location will be selected. The walk will go on, rain, snow or shine according to Santiago.

"The election on a national level was all about negative, negative, negative and not celebrating how the difference between people are the foundation of this country," added Santiago.

She said a group of Soroptimists, led by Vicki Gonzales, got together after they felt a need to do something after an election cycle that contained language that was "negative and inconsistent with who we feel as a country."

Men, women and children are all invited to participate.

"I have decided to stick with love. Kate is too great burden to bear." - Martin Luther King, Jr. said in Atlanta in 1967. "What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic."

The march isn't a statement against Trump, but a recommitment to the constitutional values the country was formed on, equality and justice for all. The goal of the march Saturday is to be able to move forward on some issues that are important to our community according to said Santiago.

"We want to celebrate diversity, support human rights," said Santiago. "Women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights. This is our strength and our foundation."

Positive messaging is the focus of the day's events and letting the community know that diversity is what makes us great. The march will also highlight positive challenges to what appears to be changing in Washington in regards to climate change, public safety and health care.

"Hope is that with a positive message that together we are stronger, then we can come together to start holding elected officials accountable and for what they profess as normal," said Santiago. "Become activists, we can then have an intelligent, respectful conversation about these policies that are exclusive."

Saturday's march will also be an avenue participates can take in getting involved in the community. There will be information at the end to give people avenues of service afterwards.

There will be written pledges taken at the end of the march and those will be affixed to a banner. The results will be sent to Washington, D.C.

Santiago said participants will be sending a unified community message to Congress that "we're better together, and the fact that we're different just makes us that much greater."

Twenty women, including SLT Vice-Mayor Wendy David, City Councilwoman Brooke Laine, Susan Chandler and Peggy Cocores, met one day to start planning the event, and a network began to get all of the appropriated permits.

All of Saturday's marches are a spin off of the main one in the nation's capitol, but each has their own individual focus. Some are rallies that focus on a negative belief, something the South Lake Tahoe didn't want to focus on.

"We didn't want to be anti-something. Our focus is on healing and unification and trying to create a space for those that want to get involved and find out how," said Santiago.

Once the pledges are gathered, put into a single document and sent to Washington, the same messages will be sent all the way down to local levels. Santiago said they want to hold the elected official accountable and show them the rhetoric from the election is not acceptable. She said they also want to send the message that they are being watched, and going to be held accountable for their actions.

The march promises a positive message.

"I hope it will be an impactful few hours," said Santiago. "We will have a unifying community message that we're better together, the fact that we're different just makes us that much greater."

More information on the bi-state march can be found on their Facebook page HERE.