Northbrook resident Patti Vile flew to Washington, D.C. Saturday morning, attended the Women’s March on Washington, and was at a meeting of fellow progressives in downtown Northbrook the following evening.
It was no coincidence.
“My concern is that we have momentum, an enormous spirit of can, will, and we have to be ready for the next steps. We have to engage people now,” said Vile, a longtime activist. “This feeling of togetherness — it’s so easy for it to disappear. The daily things we have to do that are so important tend to take over, but they may not be the most important.”
She and her partner, Herb Brenner, who also was in Washington, attended a meeting Sunday of the United North Shore Chicago Chapter at Northbrook’s Civic Building, where subjects included gun control and opiate addiction. An addiction speech was made by Stephanie Zwilling, a Northfield social worker who is seeking to open an addiction-recovery home in east Northbrook. Most of the people at the meeting, Brenner said, had been at the Chicago event.
Northbrook activist Sharon Sanders attended the Washington march with Vile.
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“I believe there had to be at least a million people, because there were people in every direction, non-stop people,” Sanders said. “The unfortunate part was that it was still a majority white group, not enough diverse faces, not enough Latinos, blacks.”
Sanders also returned for a meeting. She went to the Chicago Area Peace Action, formerly known as North Suburban Peace Initiative, saying she was pleased the group has recently become a more activist organization. She praised one of its leaders, Northbrook activist David Borris.
Borris, the owner of Northbrook’s Hel’s Kitchen Catering, said Evanston-based Chicago Area Peace Action is working hard at coalition building, breaking out of “issues silos.”
“I went down to the Chicago march with my wife and kids and the other 249,499 people,” Borris said. “But if Black Lives Matters has a march in two months, and they only have 50,000, and Organized Communities against Deportation gets 10,000, this will only have been a vanity project.”
The Washington march was the first march of any kind for Vile’s niece Francie Turk and her daughter Dana, 14.
Turk, of Lincolnshire, said she and friends who went to marches in Washington and Chicago, shared ideas when they returned.
“This is a very blue state, but we’re looking for ways that we can get involved in neighboring states that are kind of hovering between red and blue. Like Wisconsin,” she said.
She said her friends were discussing the future on “a big group text.”
Sanders has founded a group to bring progressive organizations together to help those looking for ways to be active, as partisans or nonpartisans, to find an outlet.
She hopes her nascent group, tentatively called Democracy for America Now, will have a website that would guide people to a participating organization.
“I want people to be able to go to their state, then go to their city and then go to their issue,” she said.
Mary Bleeker, who participated in the Women’s March in Chicago, said she thinks the best way to move forward is to write and call members of Congress.
Bleeker, a 57-year-old Northbrook resident, attended with friends from high school and called the march in “very uplifting and very positive.” Even though there were some “ugly signs,” it was a moment for like-minded individuals to come together, she said.
“We just want issues to be thought of by the new administration and not move backward,” Bleeker said.
After the march, Bleeker said she saw a lot of comments on Facebook saying that those marching are being negative and “should just accept the new administration.” But Bleeker said that those people “are taking the wrong message from the march” because it was about love and caring about others.
“The fact is (Trump) is president. I did not feel it was a hate march. I felt it was a going forward we want to be heard,” Bleeker said.
Staff writer Alex Kukulka contributed to this report.
Twitter @IrvLeavitt