We Are March On

We Are March On

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Runtime: 90 mins
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What would you say is the most courageous part of the body? I say it’s the feet. Everywhere we go, our feet go first.

As a child of Guyanese immigrants, my family visited their home country often. My mother’s cousin, Aunt Gertie, loved to walk everywhere and often took me with her. I knew the walk would be long when she said, “Let’s put a good foot to it.”

You’ve heard that “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” I’ve been thinking a lot about those individual walkers whose steps sparked massive change.

Mississippi. When James Meredith became the first African American admitted to the University of Mississippi, it ignited the Ole Miss Riot of 1962, requiring 31,000 troops to quell the violence, the largest invocation ever of the Insurrection Act of 1807.

In 1966, Meredith embarked on a solo March Against Fear from Memphis TN, to Jackson, MI, to highlight continuing racism and promote voter registration. He was shot on his second day. But many others then picked up the cause. When Meredith rejoined the march, they numbered 15,000 and had registered 4,000 new voters.

India. During decades of colonization, the British monopolized the importation and distribution of salt, which they oppressively taxed and forbade the Indian people from producing or selling themselves.

In 1930, attorney-turned-nonviolent activist Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi and a few dozen followers started a 24-day, 240-mile Salt March to the Arabian Sea in protest. Each day, hundreds more joined them. They reached the shore and picked up handfuls of beach salt, technically breaking the law. Next, Gandhi announced a march on a local saltworks. By then, his supporters had grown into the thousands. British troops retaliated with brute force. The gruesome news coverage gained international attention, which helped galvanize the eventual end of British imperial rule.

France. In the summer of 1983, a growing series of racist attacks on immigrant North Africans erupted in riots outside the city of Lyon, the first incidence of modern large-scale public unrest in that country.

Inspired by the examples of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gandhi, two clerics organized a nonviolent March for Equality and Against Racism. That October, 17 people started walking from Marseilles. Fifty days later, 932 miles away, it ended in a demonstration in Paris, 100,000 strong.

South Africa. The 1976 Soweto Uprising was a series of marches led by schoolchildren during the apartheid era to protest the imposition of the Afrikaans language in schools. After police opened fire, the protests escalated into a much larger national challenge to governmental authority.

Alabama. In 1963, one thousand children skipped school and marched to downtown Birmingham. They were met with dogs and fire hoses, images of which shocked the nation and eventually led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

We are now called March On.

There are any number of causes that demand our attention. Each of us has something toward which we can march. Disparities in racial, economic, representative, employment, gender, health, education, housing, policing, environmental and food justice all need our informed participation.

March On is here with year-round events and our annual festival, continuing to educate and inspire action. Join us from October 6-13 for this year’s festival! Click here to register for in-person events, and here for on-demand film screenings. Stay tuned for more updates!

And once you decide what you will march on, be sure to put a good foot to it.

March On!

Isisara Bey
Artistic Director

Isisara Bey

Isisara Bey

Artistic Director

March On

Isisara Bey helps businesses thrive by empowering individuals to take action, overcome procrastination, and achieve peak performance. As a dynamic keynote speaker, she uses engaging content and interactive presentations to inspire audiences and foster stronger teams, with clients ranging from the U.S. State Department to the Apollo Theater.


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