Jewish Group
Related: About this forumIs the Women's March Melting Down?
Is the Womens March Melting Down?Millions of women mobilized against gender inequality and the election of Donald Trump in 2016. But only four of them ended up at the topand the consequences have been enormous.
By Leah McSweeney and Jacob Siegel
On Nov. 12, 2016, a group of seven women held a meeting in New York. They had never worked together beforein fact, most of them had never metbut they were brought together by what felt like the shared vision of an emerging mission.
There were effectively two different cohorts that day. The first one included Breanne Butler, Karen Waltuch, Vanessa Wruble and Mari Lynn Foulgera fashion designer turned entrepreneur with a sideline in activist politics, who had assumed the nom de guerre Bob Bland. These four were new acquaintances who had connected in the days since Donald Trumps election, through political networking on social media. Most of them had filtered through the Pantsuit Nation Facebook group, where a woman in Hawaii named Teresa Shook had days before floated the idea of a female-centered march to protest the incoming administration.
Soon after, Wrublea Washington, D.C., native who founded OkayAfrica, a digital media platform dedicated to new African music, culture, and politics, with The Roots Questlovereached out to a man she knew named Michael Skolnik. The subject of a New York Times profile the previous year as an influencer at the nexus of social activism and celebrity, Skolnik held a powerful though not easily defined role in the world of high-profile activist politics. Its very rare to have one person who everyone respects in entertainment, or in politics, or among the grass roots, said Van Jones, in a 2015 New York Times piece. But to have one person whos respected by all three? There isnt anyone but Michael Skolnik.
When Wruble relayed her concern that the nascent womens movement had to substantively include women of color, Skolnik told her he had just the women for her to meet: Carmen Perez and Tamika Mallory. These were recommendations Skolnik could vouch for personally. In effect, he was connecting Wruble to the leadership committee of his own nonprofita group called The Gathering for Justice, where he and Mallory sat on the board of directors, and Perez served as the executive director.
In an email to Tablet, Skolnik confirmed this account of the groups origins. A few days after the election, I was contacted by Vanessa Wruble, who I have known for many years, asking for help with The Womens March and specifically with including women of color in leadership, he wrote. I recommended that she speak with Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez, also who I have known for years.
Linda Sarsour, another colleague from The Gathering for Justice network, was not present for these initial meetings but joined the Womens March as a co-chair a short time later.
(snip)
According to several sources, it was therein the first hours of the first meeting for what would become the Womens Marchthat something happened that was so shameful to many of those who witnessed it, they chose to bury it like a family secret. Almost two years would pass before anyone present would speak about it.
It was there that, as the women were opening up about their backgrounds and personal investments in creating a resistance movement to Trump, Perez and Mallory allegedly first asserted that Jewish people bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown peopleand even, according to a close secondhand source, claimed that Jews were proven to have been leaders of the American slave trade. These are canards popularized by The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, a book published by Louis Farrakhans Nation of Islamthe bible of the new anti-Semitism, according to Henry Louis Gates Jr., who noted in 1992: Among significant sectors of the black community, this brief has become a credo of a new philosophy of black self-affirmation.
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/276694/is-the-womens-march-melting-down
That march can down in flames for all I care anymore. They took something that could have been beautiful and turned it into an "intersectional" and anti-semitic trash heap.
comradebillyboy
(10,144 posts)and I'm not even Jewish. They have plenty of other issues as well.
still_one
(92,189 posts)appears to have great admirations for Louis Farrakhan.
The women's movement is about WOMEN'S rights, and how WOMEN are being discriminated against because of their gender.
I won't address the LIES that Perez and Mallory are spewing about the Jews. That is typical anti-Semitic propaganda, and has no place in the Women's rights movement.
Unless they change the leadership of their movement, and focus on the original goals of the women's march, they will end up as a fringe movement without credibility.
DURHAM D
(32,609 posts)posted on DU.
The Grifters are beyond disgusting.
A paragraph from the article -
From now on I will refer to the women's movement as MARCH ON.
EllieBC
(3,014 posts)would likely sink to the bottom in GD. Jewish issues arent important if the antisemitism isnt being committed by the far right. When its coming from inside the house this forum acts like its not happening or worse plays what about games.
question everything
(47,476 posts)exploiting black people. They could have stayed home during the Freedom Summer of 1964, and would be alive today.
SleeplessinSoCal
(9,112 posts)It's bigger than 4 women. It's a worldwide phenom.
EllieBC
(3,014 posts)People boycott franchises all the time if the HQ does something vile.
The top of this organization is sick and needs to go.
SleeplessinSoCal
(9,112 posts)EllieBC
(3,014 posts)throw under the bus?
Im throwing this one under. Antisemitism isnt ok no matter what. I want to say that Im surprised that somebody is trying to overlook anti-Semitism but I honestly can say that this no longer shocks me.
SleeplessinSoCal
(9,112 posts)the resistance to trump. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater comes to mind.
MosheFeingold
(3,051 posts)Behind the Aegis
(53,956 posts)Princess Turandot
(4,787 posts)The lead article on the page linked above is a discussion of antisemitism and a prof at one of the City University of NY branches.
EllieBC
(3,014 posts)Sorry, all! Had too many tabs open and linked the wrong article.
MosheFeingold
(3,051 posts)I guess everyone can be united in hatred of Jewish people.
(Yes, bitter sarcasm.)
Behind the Aegis
(53,956 posts)I was one of the founding organizers of the Womens March on Raleigh (2017) and the Womens Raleigh on Rally (2018), and I am Jewish. Our ad hoc group of over 200 volunteers is not affiliated with the National Womens March. We organized in solidarity. I join Teresa Shook (whose Facebook post is credited with the idea for the Womens March) in calling on the board of the National Womens March to step down, including Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour, Carmen Perez, and Bob Bland. Their acts and omissions with relationship to anti-Semitism distract from the Womens March and its allies, and cause harm.
Anti-Semitism is on the rise. At the 2017 Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, the crowd chanted Jews will not replace us! as they marched past a synagogue. In October 2018, a self-described conservative and white nationalist killed 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Last month, a prom photo of a Wisconsin high school apparently doing the Seig Heil went viral. Jews are being targeted locally, as well: this summer and again this the fall, threats were sent to Triangle area temples.
We cannot equivocate in the face of anti-Semitism and violence. We cannot be silent. We cannot give a pass to an elder for inciting anti-Semitism because he has done other great things. Each member of the board of the National Womens March has done one or more of these things and in so doing has contributed to allowing anti-Semitism to fester within the womens movement.
Board Members Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour and Carmen Perez have attended rallies led by Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader. While Farrakhan has done great works, he also foments hate and discrimination against multiple communities at his rallies. Regarding Jews, he has compared us to termites, called us bloodsuckers, and exalted Hitler as a very great man.
more...
Washington Womens March group disbands amid anti-Semitism controversy at national level
Statewide organizers operating under the Womens March banner announced this week that they are dissolving their group in protest of national leaders association with speakers seen as anti-Semitic.
The decision wont affect plans for a third annual downtown march in Spokane next month, local organizers stressed Friday.
Angie Beem, a Spokane Valley resident who served as board president of Womens March Washington, announced the dissolution of the state group on Facebook on Thursday, citing the national organizations ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Beem, who helped organize the march in Spokane in 2017 and made an unsuccessful bid for Spokane Valley City Council that fall, said in an interview Friday the decision to disband wasnt easy.
Its heartbreaking. Whenever you create something that literally changed your life, its really hard to walk away from it, Beem said.
Local organizers knew the state organization was considering disbanding after planned marches in January, said Lori Feagan, an organizer with Spokane Womens March. But they were unaware a public announcement would be made this week, she said.
We are independent, Feagan said. We dont have any financial backing (from) the state or national organization.
more...
Womens March rolls out political platform before its third Washington rally
For two years, the Womens March has cultivated an image: fiery protests, rallies, sit-ins, arrests and women taking to the streets en masse with catchy slogans, chants and songs.
But a month before its rally on the Mall, the group has announced a change in course.
At the Jan. 19 march, the organization plans to unveil a federal policy platform it is calling the Womens Agenda that will outline a 10-prong call to action for lawmakers. The agenda will pinpoint realistically achievable priorities, such as raising the federal minimum wage, addressing violence against women and reproductive rights and passing the long-dormant Equal Rights Amendment, officials said.
Once we have this platform, we intend to organize around it, to mobilize around it and .?.?. we will consider it to be marching orders from our movement, said Rachel OLeary Carmona, chief operating officer of Womens March Inc. And we will bring about swift political consequences to those who oppose us.
The focus on creating an actionable doctrine comes as the organization is trying to ramp up support for its march amid accusations of anti-Semitism and ongoing controversies surrounding Womens March leaders ties to the Nation of Islam and its leader, Louis Farrakhan.
more...
It isn't just the fucking anti-Semitism, it is also the homophobia and transphobia! Get rid of those assholes....NOW! Pun, intended. Of course, we all know, anti-Semitism is A-OK.
EllieBC
(3,014 posts)that Farrakhan is a huge misogynist. Did she miss that part???