Justice was never going to be easy. It wasn’t even going to be merely hard. Justice is the impossible dream, the stuff of fantasies like Neverland and El Dorado and Narnia. Nonetheless, justice fades only when we forget it’s a journey, not a destination. Marching on the road to justice is like orienteering with a map where every direction forward has a marker reading, “Here be Monsters.” Still, we march.
When women marched in 2017, it was with defiance and pride generated from decades of progress toward equality and respect. Eight years later, the skies are darker, the uncharted routes more treacherous and threatening; today, the dark lords are looking down from satellites instead of gilded towers. Women have been reminded once again, “A woman’s work is never done.”
It’s a hard lesson, but then it’s always been hard. The irony of the myth of blind justice is just that: it’s a myth, an ideal, a goal too seldom realized in the hard context of bought governments, bought judges, and bought media.
In Modesto, the 2025 Women’s March was on January 18. It was quieter and smaller than the one in 2017. Some will think the diminished numbers mark a sign of defeat, but then resolve has always been quieter and more durable than anger…