The Haunted: Invisibility, Ephemera, and the March for Women's Lives
Diana Konopka

Over the course of the 2004 Republican National Convention, held in New York City, constituents were met with varied performances of protest, many of which were given enough media coverage to rival their opponents; the occurrences outside of Madison Square Gardens became as media-worthy as the events inside. Among these direct actions was the March for Women Lives held on Saturday, August 28th. Though recognized as one of the more prominent marches, it was often perceived as the alternative march of the week, or a prep to Sunday's big march for United Peace and Justice. In other words, the March for Women's Lives was consistently relegated to the status of "Other".

This position of difference can be approached through a discussion of the history ghosting this march and the subsequent consequences of such a haunting. The March for Women's Lives was seated in a precedent of resistance to hegemonic discourse, a legacy of progressive movement. As it draws on the history of women's radical actions this march is linked directly to the past, but a past defined through a call for future change. The marchers were not satisfied to act on one day and one day only but rather acted with a specific agenda to effect tangible change. This was therefore a march that continues to threaten the condition of political ephemerality around which protest, performance, and the performance of protest are comfortably defined. The March for Women's Lives carries a significantly visible connection to history and effectively reminds us that a progressive past ghosts the present and the future.

On the Saturday before the convention began, 25,000 participants gathered in Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn with the intention of voicing their concerns over "global family planning, real sex education, accessible, safe and legal abortion, birth control options, the right to privacy regarding sexuality, and equal access to health care!" (Planned Parenthood, 2004). Planned Parenthood of New York and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America were the primary organizers behind this collaborative action. However, it was also produced through the efforts of NARAL Pro-Choice New York, New York Civil Liberties Union, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, National Organization for Women/New York City, Black Women's Health Imperative, Empire State Pride Agenda, Family Planning Advocates of New York State, International Women's Health Coalition, Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Community Center, New York Metropolitan Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, Pro-Choice Public Education Project, and Sexuality Information and Education.

Though constituents from each of these organizations were present, unassociated participants also engaged in the day's activities; small gatherings of friends and families. Yet, perhaps most interesting, was the presence of grassroots organizations such as Code Pink and the Radical Sex Cheerleaders. With homemade costumes, including one fishnet body stocking on a particularly brave cheerleader and Code Pink's signature hot pink outfits, these groups provided the protest with a sense of intelligently directed fun and humor. They called attention to themselves, through their looks and manners, in a way that got the crowd's juices flowing. For instance, the cheerleaders often engaged in overt, unapologetic, and celebratory sexual cheers in the response to the speakers' claims. The official organizers had prepared a rally with speakers representing their respective groups, and for the most part it was highly effective, with cheers and raised fists emanating from the crowd at the appropriate points. These grassroots organizations provided an effective participant in the rally. They further opened up the discourse between organizers and participants, blurring the boundaries between these two distinctions. Through their performances of protest, the gaze of the marchers was reverted back onto themselves, reaffirming the power and potential of those gathered. They helped to remind the group that its presence and action was the force behind the march; the crowd could pay attention to itself as the activists of this march.

The allusion above to the fun and humor of the event deserves another mention in relation to the type of environment created by this march. This was a day of enjoyable activity, along the lines of a celebration. Loose collections of drummers provided a danceable rhythm to the movement of the music. The participants themselves were repeatedly praised in the rally preceding the march, and a call and response illuminated those participants who identified as pro-choice mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, and children, an invocation of generations who marched for the same purpose. The atmosphere was safe and inviting and it is possible to connect this sense of fun and celebration to the pointed agenda brought to this march. Rather than simply announcing a singular "No", the March for Women's Lives pronounced an affirmative, and progressive "Yes" to a specific agenda of change. The fun celebrated the progressive potential of this movement.

The specificity and aim of agenda sparked a unity that is perhaps best illustrated through the act of the march itself. Following the rally, the participants together crossed the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. Though individual diversity was represented in homemade posters, puppets, and other accoutrements, the participants united under one large, mass-distributed sign reading "I Love Pro-Choice New York." This poster became a symbol representing the unity of agenda. As a group, the participants passed under the cathedral arches of the Brooklyn Bridge to rally again on the other side. The March for Women's Lives was a march against specific governmental actions and, more importantly, for specific progressive change. This concept was ingrained in the very geography of the march. Rather than limiting itself to a circle around Manhattan, the participants headed across the Brooklyn Bride from one borough to another. The protest became a continuum with a geographic history and future. With their crossing, the marchers symbolically enacted their agenda, a performance of progressive movement into new territory.

The March for Women's Lives avidly employed its relationship to a history of protest towards the ends of creating a more temporally transcendent action. On the most basic level, through the very mention of the march's organizers, one can begin to see this protest's intimate connection to history. A reading of this list invokes memories of the fight for civil rights, women's liberation, the suffrage movement, the battle for HIV/AIDS awareness and the pro-choice movement. Each invocation carries the weight of a memory of progressive, and effective, action.

The very extent of this list connects the march to a wider historical base. It provides an illumination of the extensive reach of the women's movement and the diversity of arenas in which women have been active, and effective, participants; "In addition to women's suffrage and liberation movements, large numbers of women were involved in most of the social movements in America, such as abolition, temperance, health reform, peace, progressivism and municipal reform, and civil rights" (West and Blumberg, 9). For instance, feminists have nurtured progressive actions, such as the civil rights movement and the fight for gay and lesbian rights. The story does read both ways. Likewise, such movements have in turn affected the women's movement, opening doors and/or motivating further action, through either inspiration or frustration. In short, these histories are intertwined.

articipation in the March for Women's Lives included members in a continuing history; it is a conscious connection to an ongoing struggle, which endows this march with the potential of moving beyond ephemerality to engage a still living past. Furthermore, though this point is up for further debate, this inclusion points to a potential recognition of women, and persons in general, as multi-faceted and complex individuals; in other words, that human beings simultaneously inhabit a variety of traditionally exclusionary categories, such as race, class, gender, and sexuality.

In addition to these broad concerns are the specifics of this march, carefully designed to maintain a historical continuity through the employment of traces from the past. The very structure of this protest is intimately connected to the fight for women's rights. In her discussion surrounding the aesthetic presentation of early 20th century feminists, Liz McQuiston argues, "The use of spectacle—by means of large-scale demonstrations, marches, parades, and processions—was one of the most dramatic and effective ways in which suffrage societies could show allegiance to their cause and the strength of their movement" (44). The parade protest provided the opportunity to introduce women into the public sphere, thereby disrupting the binaries of public and private. Today, the employment of this same technique not only structurally situates the contemporary women's movement within this dramatic history but also theoretically. The confrontation between public and private continues as the personal is again illustrated as political. It is amazing how, over the years, the same basic issue remains; women are still taking to the streets to announce the existence and significance of their presence, and to demand the right to speak and act for themselves.

Further details abound that evidence the construction of the March for Women's Lives in relation to the continuing history of the women's movement. Yet in order to effectively confront ephemerality, the marchers provided not only for the past but also for the future. Indeed, one might argue that the work of connecting to history only resonates with potential if it promises to affect the future. In other words, how effective is it to claim something for this moment if its weight of significance cannot be carried into the next? Efficacy demands a relationship with the future. This relationship was established primarily through two avenues, in the emphasis placed on generational involvement and, as previously discussed, the voicing of a specific progressive agenda.

The March for Women's Lives was most diverse in the ages of its participants. Though a substantial variety was represented in the race, class, and sexuality of the marchers, a much greater diversity was evident in the broad scope of generations. Age proved to be a stronger rallying point than any other identifying category. The speakers made direct reference to the march's diversity of age; they cheered the pro-choice mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, and children that constituted the crowd. Interestingly, each of these terms qualifies generation over gender. Furthermore, every marcher could thereby situate him or herself within the generational categories of the march, thereby conflating diversity and unity; participants could singularly identify themselves within a larger umbrella category that enveloped the entire march. Generation therefore became the "official" primary identifying category of this march. Through the inclusion of a diversity of ages, this event became a temporal continuum, performing for the past, present, and future.

How might one interpret all this history and history making as confronting and challenging ephemerality? In true performative form, it appears that the March for Women's Lives is effective in blurring the boundaries of time. José Muñoz expresses ephemera as "a kind of evidence of what has transpired but certainly not the thing itself. It does not rest on epistemological foundations but is instead interested in following traces, glimmers, residues, and specks of things" (10). By all means, the march was limited to a traditional sense of time and space. However, it can also be discussed in terms of these traces, thereby confronting such temporal limits. The past, present, and future become temporally twisted together. This is not to say that the ephemeral moment does not pass but rather that it does not disappear altogether. This march is situated both of and in history, thereby increasing the potential political efficacy of these ephemera.

Indeed, through the very use of ephemera in the process of history making, this march threatened the dominant binary upon which our history and culture are supposedly based. In other words, not only did this march reintroduce the past into the present but it also threatened the very understanding of this past. Frightening for some, "ephemera is a mode of proofing and producing arguments often worked by minoritarian culture and criticism makers" (Muñoz, 10). Allowing ephemera to enter into the process of history is to allow "them" into "our" space. By continually relegating the March for Women's Lives to the status of Other, this comfortable binary is maintained.

New York is a haunted city; it is a place that carries presence even in absence. It is inhabited by the traces of years of daily ephemera and saturated with the incomprehensible memory of those about whom one knows nothing. It is generally accepted that the Republican National Convention came to New York City with the intention of claiming some of these ghosts as their own. The tragedy of September 11, 2001 has become a rallying point for President Bush and his supporters; in certain circles, the death of thousands has become an occasion to celebrate the patriotism and leadership of the nation's Commander-in-Chief. These events and victims are drawn into partisan politics and manipulated to sustain the hegemonic discourse that permeates American government today. But on August 28, 2004 a group of protesters walking with their friends and families across the Brooklyn Bridge refused to let the Republicans own the ghosts that did not want to go with them, ensuring that the fight goes on.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. March for Women's Lives Poster. Available from http://www.ppnyc.org; accessed August 24, 2004.
2. McQuiston, Liz. Suffragettes to She-Devils: Women's Liberation and Beyond. London: Phaidon, 1997.
3. Muñoz, José Esteban. "Ephemera as Evidence: Introductory Notes to Queer Acts." Women in Performance 8:2 (1996).
4. West, Guida and Rhoda Lois Blumberg. "Reconstructing Social Protest from a Feminist Perspective." In Women and Social Protest. Guida West and Rhoda Lois Blumberg (eds.) New York: Oxford, 1990.

Diana Konopka is currently a Master's student in the Performance
Studies department at NYU.