- A bombshell report in Tablet depicts pervasive anti-Semitism among the Women’s March leadership.
- The national Women’s March vehemently denies the allegations, but one of its PR partners made bizarre demands of journalists who shared the Tablet article on Twitter.
- Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour, and Carmen Perez have challenged their former colleagues turned detractors to a public conversation, and accused them of lying.
- A growing number of local and state chapters have disassociated from the national organisation.
There’s a problem in the leadership of the Women’s March, and it’s leading to the splintering of the movement nationally.
An article in Tablet last week depicted the Women’s March as an organisation whose very first official meeting included anti-Semitic tropes spoken by those still in the organisation’s leadership.
Some of these had been widely propagated by Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, such as “Jews were proven to have been leaders of the American slave trade.”
Several witnesses, including women of colour, corroborated allegations that later meetings among the Women’s March leadership also included anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish women in the room. This included an accusation leveled at one Jewish organiser, Vanessa Wruble, that “your people hold all the wealth.”
The story, by Leah McSweeney and Jacob Siegel, details how Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez, Linda Sarsour, and Bob Bland solidified their roles as the collective public face of a movement that was actually far more decentralized than the public was led to believe at the time of the historic January 2017 marches across the country. At the historic march protesting the inauguration of President Donald Trump, anywhere from 3.6 to 4.6 million people marched in cities across the US.
But as the Women’s March brand grew in stature and the organisation brought in millions of dollars in donations, as well as a fortune from branded merchandise, the murky financial management of the organisation has come under scrutiny. Also criticised is the relationship between the leadership – Mallory and Sarsour, in particular – with the Nation of Islam (NOI) and Farrakhan, whose long history of anti-Semitic and racist statements is well documented.
Read the article by Anthony L.Fisher on Business Insider Australia.
[Image: Women’s March Co-Chairwomen Bob Bland, Carmen Perez, Linda Sarsour, and Tamika D. Mallory during the Women’s March Power to the Polls voter-registration tour launch at Sam Boyd Stadium on January 21, 2018, in Las Vegas. Demonstrators across the nation gathered over the weekend, one year after the historic Women’s March on Washington, to protest President Donald Trump’s administration and to raise awareness for women’s issues. ]