Caribbean nationals join Women's March

With protests happening less than 24 hours before and warnings from their families, eight women of Caribbean descent from New York and Maryland, and one man, their driver, loaded into a SUV and headed to the United States capital to join the Women's March in Washington, DC.

Singing songs of praise and participating in constant chatter about the day ahead, the nervous but optimistic women set out on a journey to walk for their Caribbean counterparts who were faced with issues that seemed to overshadow their accomplishments.

The women are members of the Irie Butterfly Foundation (IBF), a group founded by Syntyche Clarke, senior vice-president of Irie Jam Radio, to keep youth of Jamaican and Caribbean descent connected to their cultural traditions and heritage.

"I honestly walked for my mom," said Denise Dixon, IBF member, whose mother migrated from Jamaica in the 1960s to the United States.

"We walked for our culture, the women of Caribbean culture, we walked for all women's issues, everything that women were faced with," Dixon added.

According to American political activist Thomas Paine, "It is not in numbers, but in unity that our great strength lies. Yet our present numbers are sufficient to repel the force of all the world."

Paine's words came to life last Saturday with hundreds of rallies across the world, with more than an estimated half million people marching on the US capital and more than 2.5 million worldwide to highlight issues affecting women.