In 1969, the largest antiwar protest in the United States took place in Washington, D.C. when an estimated half a million people gathered in the nation’s capital to plead for an end to the Vietnam War. Demonstrations were held in other cities and towns across the country in the months that followed. I was at the one in New York City, where so many people participated it was impossible to duck into a storefront for relief from the crush of people who’d had enough. It was an amazing way to experience people power up close.

America has a long record of marches that changed history. During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s African Americans, joined by many white activists, mobilized for a difficult and unprecedented journey to equality and human rights that continues today. It started with the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott after Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a while man and was followed by several marches and other actions, culminating with the 1963 March on Washington. That was the largest political rally for human rights ever seen in the U.S. with approximately 300,000 people converging on the Mall to protest for African Americans’ freedom. It was there that Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. The event led to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Five years later, the Poor People’s Campaign, a multicultural movement, led to Resurrection City where tents were set up along the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. A major march occurred there called a Solidarity Day Rally for Jobs, Peace, and Freedom. It happened on June 19, 1968.

At about this time the women’s movement was coalescing and mobilizing to act for women’s rights and full equality, as their foremothers had done for the right to vote. The suffragettes had stopped at nothing, suffering forced feedings and other brutality in jail. It paid off when the 19th amendment was passed by Congress in 1919, a 100th anniversary being observed as I write.

Fifty years later activists organized a Women’s Strike for Equality in New York. Over 50,000 women attended and over 100,000 demonstrated in solidarity in 42 states. Later, marches on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment began – and continued across the country. (Congress still has not ratified the ERA, but we’re getting close.)

After the ERA, women marched again for abortion rights and reproductive health and privacy with massive demonstrations taking place in Washington in 1986 and 1989. I was there in 1989 as an activist and journalist, proud to join the crowds that equaled or surpassed protest marches that had taken place against the Vietnam War. Then, of course, came January 21, 2017, when hundreds of thousands of women gathered in Washington after Donald Trump became president.

Today, people in places as diverse as Romania, Venezuela, and Hong Kong are marching against their governments to demand equality, freedom, justice and human rights. Representing all ages, genders, abilities and classes, and defying everything from bad weather to police brutality they are fighting together against corruption, greed, and autocracy.

The common denominator in all these historical moments and current events is that people have gathered together to mourn what they were losing, or never had, and then they marched. They took to the streets and marched in solidarity until governments listened and they changed history – sometimes incrementally but always dramatically.

I wonder why that isn’t happening now, here, again. Why aren’t Americans, the majority of whom dislike or despise what the Trump administration has wrought, and robbed us of, mobilized like we once were around monumental issues and threats to our security and wellbeing? Why is our collective outrage not on display in such powerful ways that there is no ignoring our refusal to collude?

When children are ripped from their parents and caged in cold jails indefinitely and made ill physically and emotionally; when youth are murdered because of their skin color, when adults die for lack of access to medical care, when gun violence takes innocent lives every day, when women have no control over their own bodies, when the president has a total lack of morality because of personal gain and massive ego, when we know he is guilty of violating the Constitution and of committing impeachable offenses, when he surrounds himself with unqualified and often cruel acolytes, what is keeping us from marching and marching and marching – and perhaps even camping out on the Mall indefinitely– in defense of democracy and human rights?

Why, I must ask, haven’t we called for and enacted a National Day of Mourning, and Marching?

As one activist of the 1980s put it, “No matter what they are called, perhaps the single most powerful, peaceful way to bring about social chance is for people to stand together publicly on behalf of an important cause.” In a more current context, that’s what protesters in Hong Kong did As one of them noted recently, “All we can do as citizens is keep going, protest peacefully and let the government and regime know our demands.”

Are we ready, America?

The day after the election, after I picked myself up from the floor and stopped pulling my hair out, I had a fantasy that went like this: Michelle Obama walks to a podium, somber and clearly containing her anger. She pans the room, pauses, and says, “I’m going to take a risk. Many of you won’t like what I have to say. My handlers will hate it. But I’m going to throw away my script and speak from the heart.”

“My husband did not deserve the terrible, bruising rebuff he suffered in the election. No president in modern history has had to suffer the levels of disrespect and attacks on his character and abilities, nor has any president I can recall had so many crises to deal with simultaneously. And no president in our history has been subjected to the incipient racism that is part of America’s underbelly. Whatever you think of him, or his policy decisions and actions, he did nothing to warrant the horrific way he’s been treated, and he did not deserve to be betrayed by his fellow Democrats such that Republicans – many of whom should have their characters and abilities examined – swept into unquestioned power, something I think we will all come to regret.”

The First Lady could not say this, much as she might have fantasized doing so. But those of us who are not public figures can. And we should, because what happened in the election was unconscionable. It was also deeply dangerous because it has led us one step closer to the demise of democracy, and the rise of an American oligarchy. Anyone who thinks that won’t happen, or doesn’t matter, will learn too late that they got what they didn’t vote for.

Less than 40 percent of Americans voted in the midterm elections. That’s not surprising if you consider the history of midterms, but it is alarming: History also tells us that passivity is the path to the abuse power.

Why did people vote against their own interests? Why did they re-elect those who screw them out of needed support systems? Why do they endorse politicians who are in trouble with the law?

Here’s what I really don’t get. Why did Democrats run so far from their president and the values he represents? Why not campaign on those values, and tout the president’s achievements? What was the Democratic debacle, that huge and ugly betrayal, about?

Here are just some of the achievements I wish the Dems had campaigned on and that voters should have been reminded to consider. President Obama reduced the unemployment rate from over 10 percent when he took office to 5.8 percent. There are now over three and a half million private sector jobs that didn’t exist during the Bush recession and there is huge reduction in the deficit. The U.S. auto industry still exists. The president also stood up to Wall Street and helped avert a global financial collapse. Under his administration, the tax rates for average working families are the lowest since 1950; the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act cut taxes for 95% of America's working families.

The president has understood that women and gays are people too. He signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act instituting equal pay for women. He expanded funding for the Violence Against Women Act and appointed two pro-choice women to the Supreme Court. He repealed “Don’t ask don’t tell” and appointed more openly gay officials than anyone in history. He also extended benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees and changed HUD rules to prohibit gender and sexual orientation-based discrimination in housing.

President Obama also made us a little safer. He eliminated Osama bin Laden, disrupted Al Quaeda terrorist plots, toppled Gadhafi, ended two wars, and helped restore America's reputation around the world. He signed an Executive Order banning torture and put the U.S. in compliance with the Geneva Convention.

He addressed education and health care head on. The president increased funding for student financial aid, cut banks out of the process by reforming student loan rates and expanding the Pell Grants program providing opportunities for low income students. Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act he invested in all levels of education, including Head Start.

With the Affordable Health Care Act, President Obama expanded health insurance coverage to 30 million more people, expanded Medicaid and reduced Medicare costs. He increased federal support for biomedical and stem cell research. He increased the number of children covered by health insurance by four million and extended COBRA health coverage for the unemployed.

The president may not have addressed climate change adequately but he strengthened environmental protection through new laws and policies. He fast-tracked regulations to increase fuel efficiency standards and ordered energy plants to plan for producing at least 15% of all energy through renewable resources.

It would take another column to record all the Obama administration has done to make our country safer, healthier, better educated, more economically sound, and more respected within the international community. Still, these facts alone should have been enough to keep Democrats from abandoning a president who like all former presidents, and human beings, is not perfect.

That they behaved so badly is the truly stunning surprise of the 2014 midterm elections.