Four years ago today my wife, several neighbors, and I drove to the Alewife MBTA station to take a Red Line train to the Women’s March protest in downtown Boston.

Although we tried to get an early start, the station’s lobby already was full of people trying to buy Charlie Cards, go through turnstiles and get to the platform. So many people were streaming in that it started to feel dangerous, not because the crowd was violent but because it seemed like someone could easily get crushed. Fortunately, someone at the state DOT or the MBTA decided to stop charging fares, opened turnstiles, and made it possible for all of us to make it safely to Boston.

I’m not someone who goes to lots of rallies, but I have been more than a few. And that rally was extraordinary, unlike any I’d ever been part of. The energy of that day underscored the dangers before us and offered hope that people might be able to effectively mobilize against those dark forces.

I haven’t thought about that march in a long time. But this morning, when I opened Facebook, it told me four years ago today I had posted a photo that was my most liked photo of 2017. The picture was of the crowd in the Alewife lobby, which I’d posted on Facebook. I did so in the slim but optimistic hope that someone who knew someone who knew someone at the MBTA would see it and realize they had to stop collecting fares to relived the dangerous crush. (I have no reason to believe that my Facebook post played any role in the MBTA’s decision to do what I hoped they would do.)

Seeing the photo made me reflect on how that day provided badly needed light in a time of darkness and also helped unleash a massive amount of energy to fight that darkness. We needed that energy and hope to get through the last four years, the election, and the post-election chaos. And now it’s gotten us to the second day of what is starting out as a promising new administration.

From my odd #stampoftheday corner of the Facebook world, I honor that day with a 50-cent stamp portraying Susan B. Anthony (who also was pictured on a 3-cent stamp issued in 1936). The 1955 stamp was issued in April 1955 on the 50th anniversary of the day the 85-year old Anthony met President Theodore Roosevelt and urged him to support a Constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote. (Anthony)

I don’t know what was said when Anthony met with Roosevelt. I do know about the words they exchanged on February 15, 1906, which was Anthony’s 86th birthday. On that day, she gave the closing remarks at the end of National American Woman Suffrage Association’s weeklong annual convention. (This turned out to be her last speech as she died less than a month later.)

Before the speech, President Roosevelt sent conventioneer organizers a congratulatory telegram which read: “Pray let me join with you in congratulating Miss Anthony upon her eighty-sixth birthday and in extending to her the most hearty good wishes for the continuation of her useful and honorable life.” Anthony, however, responded: “I wish the men would do something besides extend congratulations….I would rather have him say a word to Congress for the cause than to praise me endlessly.”

Anthony’s speech, of course, focused on the issue of suffrage, her observations about the need to keep pressing forward, even when desired changes were slow in coming. “This is a magnificent sight before me,” said Anthony, who added that over the past week she had been pleased to listen to many “wonderful addresses and speeches.”

But, she noted, that was not enough. “I have looked on so many such audiences and in my lifetime I have wizened to many such speakers, all testifying to the righteousness, the justice and the worthiness of the cause of woman suffrage,” she recalled. Those speakers, she added, were “saying in only slightly different phrases exactly what I heard these newer advocates” say at the gathering in 1906.

As Anthony noted, “those older women have gone on and most of those who worked with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my place will be filled as theirs was filled.”

But she urged, “the fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop.” And, she promised, with a new generation of women “consecrating their lives,” to building on the work of their predecessors “failure is impossible!”

It took another 14 years before women secured the right to vote and even then only white women got that right. In the slightly more than 100 years since then, there have been many difficult battles over ensuring that Blacks and other people of color also have the right to vote.

Those fights aren’t history. Rather, they continued this month in Georgia and in the US Capital. And, sadly, they are likely to continue in Washington and state capitals (and a host of localities) in the weeks, months, and probably years ahead.

Looking from today, the 2017 Women’s March strikes me as a critical a turning point in the this long fight’s current iteration. There will be other moments, including yesterday, when there will be a host of speakers “all testifying to the righteousness, the justice and the worthiness of the cause.” And as in the past, the speakers at those future events will be “saying in only slightly different phrases exactly” what has been said before. (Indeed the best of them will, as great speakers always do, draw from what was said before them.)

Sadly, there will be setbacks. But, what I saw and felt at the Women’s March and what I saw and felt yesterday – particularly from the many amazing young women who are “consecrating their lives,” to these efforts – makes me believe that over the long run, “failure is impossible.”

Be well, stay safe, do something besides extending congratulations, fight for justice, and work for peace.