DATE: Tuesday, October 21, 1997             TAG: 9710210035

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Elizabeth Simpson

                                            LENGTH:   61 lines

IT'S MORE IMPORTANT TO MARCH AT HOME THAN ON THE MALL

MAYBE IF THEY HAD a Million Women Who Often Feel Overwhelmed By Life March, I'd put on my hiking boots.

But I've been wondering lately if the urge to march in big numbers is worth the shoe leather.

It's become epidemic, what with the Million Man March two years ago. The Stand Up for Children march in June 1996. The Promise Keeper's rally three weeks ago, and now, this weekend, the Million Woman March in Philadelphia.

Between all of those, we've had marches for volunteerism, marches against domestic abuse, and mini-marches through neighborhoods to take back the streets.

Forget your tuba, just bring your cause.

I think we are in danger of march overkill here. The more marches we have, the less likely they are to make a blip on the public's radar screen of giving a hoot.

Too many marches dilute the power inherent in them. A power seen in the suffragette marches that helped bring women the vote. Civil rights marches with ``I Have A Dream'' speeches that led the country to greater rights for African-Americans. And Vietnam War protest marches that brought a swifter end to an unpopular war.

But the concerns driving those marches were political, and many of the topics being dealt with during recent marches belong to the heart and to the home.

They are about searches for spirituality. New commitments to family. Vows to reconnect with community.

Those issues are not political, they're personal.

I wonder if all the money spent on chartered buses and port-a-potties, the dollars spent in organization and pamphlets and flyers, could be better spent on helping families who can't afford the price of a bus ticket to the march.

If all the time and effort spent on getting ``there'' could be better spent ``here'' at home, with children and wives and husbands and neighbors.

This is not to say there isn't value to some of these public rallies. But the real meaning seems to be in the follow-up, rather than the show of force. It's in the men and women who get more involved in young people's lives and make new commitments to their own families.

Those are steps that quiet introspection at home could bring about in a more cost-effective way.

In this global society, however, nothing seems real any more unless it's on world-wide television, or amid hordes of people milling up and down The Mall in Washington. We think our promises and vows and even apologies must be made with press conferences and live feeds to have full impact.

This despite knowing that real commitment - especially where our own families are concerned - is made one-to-one. Over the dinner table instead of over microphone banks. During bedtime stories instead of during flowery speeches. Posed over homework rather than waving placards with mottos.

Those are commitments made over the long haul, moment by moment, day by day, year by year, instead of during a one-shot march.

Journalists and march organizers rarely follow up on the promises uttered during national marches, at least not on a person-by-person basis. But vows made to children and loved ones, face to face, over breakfast, during bedtimes and during car rides to school, are promises that are tracked closely.

By the people who matter most - our own families.

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