STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Five-year-old Naomi Broderick treated Saturday’s Women’s March as a training exercise.
After all, she will portray climate crisis activist Greta Thunberg on April 9 when her class at Big Wood School dresses up and portrays famous people.
Broderick and her 2-year-old sister Harper took their places Saturday morning at Ketchum Towne Square, holding a sign that said “Strike for the Climate,” as a few hundred men, women and children turned out for the fourth annual Women’s March.
“We’ve talked about the environment and how to take care of it,” said her mother Veronica Broderick. “I told her that women get paid $6 when men get paid $10, and she said, ‘No!’ ”
The Women’s March was started in 2017 in the wake of President Trump’s election. The largest single-day protest in American history, it has transformed into a movement to encourage more women to run for public office and to show their power at the polls.
Many of the signs marchers touted on Saturday touted votes as “our superpower” as they exhorted people to vote. And speakers noted the power of voting, as well.
“This year is vital, a vital year for our democracy,” District 26 Rep. Muffy Davis told the crowd, which steeled themselves against the cold with free cocoa and coffee provided by Starbucks. “I want each of you to make a commitment to give your time, your treasure… You’re going to vote and when you vote, take five people with you.”
Davis cited Margaret Mead’s often recited admonition: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
“We’re going to take our democracy back and we’re going to do it for the future of women,” she said.
Davis noted that 2020 marks a hundred years of women’s right to vote.
“It’s amazing the women who fought and never gave up to get us to where we are today,” she said. “At this march four years ago, I saw the power of what could happen. We needed to rise up. The next year I declared to you that I was going to run for legislature…and you let me know….that I could be a voice for change.”
Trinity Hadam, a senior at Sage School, was introduced as leading Hailey’s Sage School to become the first school in Idaho to pass a climate change resolution.
Hadam said she knew what climate change was before she knew how to multiply. Since, she said, her world has been threatened by wildfires and many of the species around her threatened by extinction.
“Something needs to change,” she said.
“My mother and father taught me to revere nature,” said Aimee Christensen, who founded the Sun Valley Institute to advocate for change in a world where half the world’s population lives within 50 miles of coastlines that could see a 10 to 13 feet in sea level rise in a world warmed by fossil fuel consumption.
“For children like Trinity, it can feel like a dark time. What gives me so much hope is leaders like Trinity,” she said as she gave a shoutout to such female leaders as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Ardern has committed her nation to reduce its carbon emissions to zero by 2050, in addition to passing a well-being budget.
“Let’s go, women. Let’s make it happen,” she added, ripping open her winter parka to reveal a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Stubborn Climate Activist.”
Hailey City Council Member Kaz Thea told the group that her mother had taken her to marches at an early age. She added that she was pleased to march and stand in solidarity with those in the 23 countries, such as Nigeria, Germany, New Zealand and Portugal that also held marches on Saturday.
Thea ticked off all the things that she supported, including social equality and “real action” on climate change. And she told how she had run for City Council because of a quote from Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, who died in 2002 in plane crash.
“He said that politics is about making people’s life better. Well, folks, our politics have been hijacked!” she said. “Our planet is burning, literally burning. Three billion birds have been extinguished. We must act now. It’s unacceptable not to act. The world is depending on us to elect changemakers.”