What's Up With the Controversy Dividing the Women's March — And What Should You Do About It?

By Talia Lavin


Earlier this week, the Democratic National Committee officially pulled support from the 2019 Women’s March, the third iteration of an event that galvanized millions of ladies to take to the streets across the country on the day immediately after Donald Trump’s inauguration as president. Not also long ago, this decision would have been shocking — especially given that the Women’s March helped inspire unprecedented numbers of girls who entered politics and won elected office in the 2018 midterms. Although the DNC’s recusal comes amid an avalanche of former sponsors departing from the March, including liberal stalwarts like EMILY’s List, NARAL, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Center for American Progress.


So what caused the controversy? It’s a complex story, however one that goes all of the way to the best of Women’s March Inc., The body that officially resembles a sprawling, decentralized women’s movement. For over each year, controversy has swirled around WMI co-chair Tamika Mallory and her ties to the Country of Islam, a African-American religious business headed by controversial preacher Louis Farrakhan. The Country of Islam, founded in 1930, has been headed by Farrakhan since 1977. Farrakhan’s bombastic condemnations of Jews and gay people — calling Judaism a “dirty religion,” accusing Jews of chemically engineering homosexuality among Black males, and stating that “Hitler was a very wonderful man” — have rendered him a fringe figure.


So what does this have to do with the Women’s March? Mallory, a gun-control activist, has both praised Farrakhan on social media, calling him the GOAT or “Greatest of All Time” in a Instagram post from 2017, and attended at least one Country of Islam-affiliated event while in her time in the national spotlight. Critics have mentioned that Mallory, and the Women’s March agency more broadly, have been overly hesitant in distancing themselves from Farrakhan and his openly anti-Semitic rhetoric. Another co-chair, Linda Sarsour, has received significant criticism from the correct wing for her support of Palestinian rights and criticism of Israel. Despite Sarsour’s efforts to address her critics, this has melded with criticism of Mallory’s association with the NOI to make design a national media firestorm over allegations of anti-Semitism.


Women's March co-chairwomen Linda Sarsour (L) and Tamika D. Mallory speak while in the Women's March "Power to the Polls" voter registration tour.


The simmering controversy boiled over this week after Women’s March leaders appeared on ABC’s The View, and Mallory resisted to condemn Farrakhan’s rhetoric. Mallory praised the Country of Islam’s work in black communities, which has extended for decades, and which black Jewish writer Adam Serwer described as “a force in impoverished black communities — not simply as a champion of the black poor or working class, although of the black underclass.” Serwer noted that the mixture of the Country of Islam’s continual presence in underserved black communities has put together a repetitive bind for black leaders, in which Farrakhan’s inflammatory rhetoric is used against black figures in the national spotlight. A similar controversy over associations with Farrakhan embroiled Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison in 2016.


The Jewish online magazine Tablet also published an investigation in which an early organizer in the Women’s March alleged that she had been pushed out of the corporation due to her Jewish faith and that, throughout a beginning meeting, national co-chair Carmen Perez and Mallory had made anti-Semitic statements, alleging that Jews were primarily accountable for the slave trade and the prison-industrial perplexing In America. (These are debunked anti-Semitic canards, traceable back to a 1991 book published by the Country of Islam called The Secret Connection between Blacks and Jews.) These allegations were picked up and then expanded on by the New York Times in a lengthy report.


The Women’s March organizers have faced significant backlash due to these associations, both from sponsors and from members of the larger grassroots movement. Multiple local Women’s March branches, including the Women’s Marches in Los Angeles and in New Orleans, have taken pains to stress their independence from the national organization, and to distance themselves from Farrakhan’s rhetoric. A call for the Women’s March leaders to resign has sparked a Twitter hashtag and a Change.Org petition with nearly ten thousand signatures. Jewish agencies have cut ties with the march, and individual Jewish females have spoken up about their conflicting feelings about participating; one told the Washington Post that she may not endorse females who “oppose one hate monger although decline to condemn another.” Others have been more circumspect; an article in The Root pointed out a double standard, stating that Mallory’s embattled position “reinforces how black females are contained accountable in ways white females rarely — if ever — confront.”


Nonetheless, the full situation has been something of a boon to the correct, with breathless coverage extending from the National Review to Breitbart and the Day-to-day Caller. This week, conservative writer Ross Douthat used the troubles besetting the Women’s March to prop up a New York Times op-ed column painting the complete left as beset by anti-Semitism, entitled “Racists to The correct, Anti-Semites to the Left.” (Douthat did not say that two months prior, the worst massacre of Jews in American history was carried out in Pittsburgh by a rabidly far-right white supremacist, nor the persistent presence of anti-Semitic conspiracies surrounding Jewish billionaire George Soros on the correct) Furthermore, the pitting of black people against Jews has caused significant strain among activists, and has been a cause of racial tension in a broad movement that prides itself on inclusiveness.


So what’s a conscientious, mindful woman who opposes bigotry to do this weekend?


The Women’s March will go on, as it has for the past two years. There really are several who will determine that a relationship between national co-chair and also a faith leader, even one as virulent as Farrakhan, isn't sufficient cause to break ties with a company that has empowered so several ladies to prepare their voices heard in politics. A March 6 statement authored by Sarsour addresses the controversy directly on the Women’s March website:


“We love and value our sister and co-President Tamika Mallory, who has played a key role in shaping these conversations. Neither we nor she shy away from the fact that intersectional movement building is challenging and often painful.


Minister Farrakhan’s statements about Jewish, queer, and trans folks are not aligned with the Women’s March Unity Principles, which were created by girls of color leaders and are grounded in Kingian Nonviolence. Women’s March is holding conversations with queer, trans, Jewish and Black members of both our team and larger movement to make space for understanding and healing.”


For those who are still skeptical and could be looking for other options, a number of option marches have sprung up in the wake of the controversy. In New York City, local agency the Women’s March Alliance has taken pains to distance itself from the national organization’s controversy, stating on their homepage that “We Don't Support Any Company Or Person That Is Anti-Semitic, Anti-Gay, Anti-Woman, Or Does Not Support Equal Rights For Every Human (sic).” And nationally, the agency March On — founded by Vanessa Wruble, an early Women’s March organizer who instructed them New York Times she felt pushed out on the basis of her faith — will be holding affiliate women’s marches across the nation. JTA, a Jewish newswire, has produced a state-by-state guide indicating which state Women’s Marches continue to affiliate with the national organization.


Dueling marches across the country (including two in the capital) may seem to emphasize an ongoing rift in the progressive movement. However hopefully it’ll be a lively if fractious crowd pouring into the streets, marching on in coexistence.