...In February 2010, NBC inaugurated the holiday on its sitcom “Parks and Recreation,” starring Amy Poehler’s iconic character Leslie Knope, civic crusader and friend extraordinaire. As Knope described, each year on Feb. 13, she gathers together her best female friends, including her mom, to celebrate what she loves about them over waffles....

Compared with their historical antecedents, the women of Leslie Knope’s generation have much greater opportunities to put their money, as well as their time, where their mouths are. The vast majority of 19th-century women’s rights activists lacked career and economic opportunities. And precarious professional situations limited women’s ability to engage in overt political activism throughout the 20th century.

But today, women have increasingly begun to tap their professional and personal networks for political contributions and support, resulting, in 2016, in a record amount of political contributions by women. And this year, the political power of women’s friendship networks has resulted in the most female — and the most racially diverse — Congress ever elected, plus a record number of women running for president in 2020.

So before merchandisers convince us that Galentine’s Day is just another occasion to buy cards and pink things for the women we love, civic activist Knope and the trailblazing female friends who preceded her — Antoinette and Lucy, Elizabeth and Susan, Pauli and Eleanor — remind us that Feb. 13 is an opportunity to celebrate the political power of female friendship. What better way to mark Galentine’s Day this year than by celebrating the record number of female officeholders and reaching out to women whose candidacies we would like to support in 2020.