Lu Griffin has no doubt at all that her deceased mother, Enid Frances Larson Griffin of St. Anthony Park, would have gladly worn a “pussyhat” at the Women’s March on Washington this weekend.
“She would have loved it,” Griffin said of her family matriarch, a former Ramsey County jail chaplain and politically active mother of eight who passed away at 86 a year ago this week. “She would have never believed the Republicans would have officially nominated someone like Trump. ”
Now, a quick yarn, pun intended, on the “pussyhat project,” which has gone viral and worldwide in recent weeks. The brainchild of a Los Angeles-based screenwriter and her knitting instructor, the rectangular shaped knitted caps with cat ears have become a social media sensation in advance of the well-publicized march the day after “President Reject” Donald Trump is sworn into office. That’s my preferred moniker the next four years for the snowflake, Twitter-obsessed, thin-skinned bombastic billionaire egomaniac who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million and has garnered the lowest approval ratings of any president-elect taking office in recent decades
The hats are a symbolic and comically fitting tongue-in-cheek play on Trump’s audiotaped boast that he can, because he is Trump, grab women by their, ahem, most private part. As of this writing, well over 60,000 such hats have been knitted, not only across the country but across the world, and shipped to eastern seaboard sites to be handed out at the Jan. 21 march.
Now this is the day after Trump rests his hand on a Bible and swears to be president for all Americans. I hope there’s at least a sanitizer on hand before he lays his small right paw on that holy book.
But back to Lu Griffin, who is expected to join countless others at Saturday’s march and rally at the nation’s capital. A 47-year-old mother of two adult children, Griffin is an assistant manager at an office-building cafeteria in St. Paul.
She is not a card-carrying feminist or a celebrity or locally known in political circles, unlike her mom. She is regular folk, working class, salt of the earth, a St. Paul native who raised two kids, holds an associate degree in criminal justice and along with her husband, Mike Hesano, takes part in annual church missions to disadvantaged communities, both domestic and in Latin America.
She said her mother was a staunch Republican until about the ’70s, the Nixon years, when she realized her values and her party’s platform on equal rights for women and related issues were becoming seriously out of sync. She inoculated her brood, both son and daughter, with the notion that women were just as good and worthy, deserving of respect and dignity.
RELATED: Pink yarn selling out in St. Paul shop, elsewhere for Women’s March caps
The D.C. march/rally is a combination of emotionally charged anti-Trump sentiment as well as notice to the incoming administration, the Republican-controlled Congress and elected officials across the nation from both sides of the aisle that the issues that concern women are not just gender-based but also universal. They include greater access to health care for the poorest among us, quality and affordable childhood through post-secondary education, sustainable living wages, and reproductive rights.
Above all, it is to let office holders know they will be held accountable for failing to acknowledge, respect or lobby for equality regardless of party loyalty or ideology.
“I took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution numerous times in my 16 years of military service,” said Trista Matascastillo, a U.S. Navy veteran, St. Paul resident and mother of two who is among the scheduled speakers at the sister march and rally taking place Saturday in front of the Minnesota Capitol building. An estimated 386 such events are slated in every state and across the world. Organizers expect nearly a million women and supporters from Barcelona to Boston to Sydney will take part in the global “sister” demonstrations.
“A constitution that doesn’t protect and defend me as a woman,” Matascastillo added. “It’s time we must make ourselves heard loud and clear that we as women deserve to be recognized by our constitution. We cannot as a country afford to roll back our progress. The incoming president and cabinet need to see just how strong a constituency we are and that we shall not be ignored.”
Griffin understands well that many groups with many agendas, a few she supports and some she does not, will show up in Washington, as well as the Saintly City she calls home, and elsewhere.
“It’s not like it’s a pro-choice rally,” said Griffin, who will head to the nation’s capitol Thursday night by bus, along with her 26-year old daughter and nearly 50 members of the Church of Disciples of Christ and others. “It’s not like it’s an equal rights rally. To me, it’s an everything rally.
“I just think he is a poor representation of America, of the U.S. as a whole, and the fact that he has to be right about everything, the fact that he talks about things he has no clue what he is talking about,” she said of Trump.
“I think she would have loved to have gone,” Griffin said of her mother, who proudly shared her birthday with Walter “Fritz” Mondale, once a rival party icon.
“I feel like I’m going for my mom and the things she stood up for, and I’m going for my daughter because she needs to realize that if you want to make a difference, you have to get your voice out there and be heard. …”
