Hundreds of thousands of women and allies\nmarched in cities all over North America Saturday, bringing people from across\nthe spectrum together to stand for equality and justice. It was the third\nannual network of women\u2019s marches that sprang out of the shock and alarm after\nthe election of U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To ensure that the nearly spontaneous eruption\nof resistance to the direction of American (and world) politics was more than\nlightning in a bottle, a movement was solidified in the form of Women\u2019s March\nInc. This body, led by a small group of activists who quickly gained\ninternational fame and recognition, not only came to helm one of the most\nremarkable new grassroots movements in American history, they also became\ncentral figures in the cadre of leftist, socialist and progressive political\nactivists that is loosely defined as \u201cthe resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately \u2013 or, perhaps, fortunately, for\nreasons we\u2019ll explain \u2013 the small group of Women\u2019s March leaders has recently\nbeen beset by controversy. In a book-length analysis last month, Tablet<\/em>\nmagazine reconstructed accounts of the earliest hours of the march movement \u2013\nincluding the marginalization of Jewish women who were there at the start and\nthe assertion, apparently made in one of the earliest meetings, that \u201cwhite\nJews\u201d were partly responsible for \u201cwhite supremacy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Additionally, some of the leaders of Women\u2019s\nMarch Inc. are associated with Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam and\nan unrepentant Jew-hater and Hitler admirer who last month capped a career of\nantisemitic rhetoric by declaring Jews \u201csatanic.\u201d Tamika Mallory, one of the\nmost visible faces of the march movement, has referred to Farrakhan as \u201cthe\nGOAT\u201d \u2013 the greatest of all time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These developments led march organizers in\nvarious cities to disassociate their marches from Women\u2019s March Inc. While some\nfigures tried to patch over or reconcile divergences within the movement, such\nefforts were undermined by top leaders, including Mallory, who appeared on\nnational TV the Monday before Saturday\u2019s marches. She defended her position on\nIsrael and Palestine. She declared \u201cthe Palestinians are native to the land,\u201d\nand that \u201cthere are people who have a number of sort of ideologies around why\nthe Jewish people feel this should be their land. I\u2019m not Jewish. So for me to\nspeak to that is not fair.\u201d She\u2019s not Palestinian, either, her interviewer\nnoted, yet she had no qualms defending Palestinians\u2019 right to national\nself-determination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At a time when another organization might aim\nfor conciliation, Women\u2019s March Inc. leaders seemed to double down on their\ntroubles. In her keynote speech to the march in Washington Saturday, Linda\nSarsour, another leading figure, expressed support for the BDS movement. While\nshe had, earlier, finally rejected Farrakhan\u2019s antisemitism and homophobia, her\ndecision to use her limited time on stage to focus on BDS \u2013 an issue peripheral\nat best to the women\u2019s movement \u2013 suggests she is not finished enflaming\ntensions with Jewish people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Notably, attendance was down at rallies across\nthe continent, including here in Vancouver. There could be a range of\nexplanations \u2013 Trump-fatigue, weather \u2013 but certainly some Jewish and\nnon-Jewish women were motivated to stay away because of the association of\nmarch leaders with bad ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Within the loose affiliation of \u201cresistance\u201d\nfigures, several of the individuals elected to the U.S. Congress in November\u2019s\nmidterm elections have made themselves known for statements about Israel and\nPalestine. One of the freshmen, Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota,\ncame under criticism for a 2012 social media post in which she wrote: \u201cIsrael\nhas hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the\nevil doings of Israel.\u201d She has since said that she didn\u2019t understand the\nimplications in her choice of words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Another new legislator, Rashida Tlaib, Democrat\nof Michigan, made her entry into Washington known by displaying a map of the\nworld with a Post-it note with the word \u201cPalestine\u201d covering Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These examples \u2013 and there are more \u2013 are\ndisheartening. That these ideas have moved from the recesses of crackpot online\ndiscussion forums and into Congress, into one of the most significant\ngrassroots organizations and, apparently, into a significant swath of the\nDemocratic party, is certainly concerning. But there is a silver lining: it\nalso allows us to openly confront the trend and, perhaps, to gain allies in\nopposing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we talk about the need to shine light on\ndark crevices of bigotry, this is exactly what we mean. Social media has, for\nbetter or worse, allowed anyone with any views to broadcast them. In the\nchaotic network of the internet, there is no practical, central force for\ncontesting bigotry and other bad ideas. When those ideas and expressions seep\ninto institutions like Women\u2019s March Inc., Congress or, even more noticeably,\nthe U.K. Labour party, this presents an opportunity unavailable elsewhere. It\nis a chance to bring these issues out in the open and contest them in the light\nof day. Among other things, it forces people with power and influence to make a\nchoice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among those who made choices in recent weeks \u2013\nthe choice to withdraw as sponsors of Women\u2019s March Inc. \u2013 are prominent\nindividuals and organizations, including the Democratic National Committee, the\nSouthern Poverty Law Centre, the women\u2019s political action group EMILY\u2019s List,\nthe LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, the pro-choice organization\nNARAL, the Centre for American Progress, and Amnesty International.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the kind of unified voice we need: a\nconcerted rejection of antisemitism or Jew-baiting or Israel-bashing that has\nemerged as a force in important places. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hundreds of thousands of women and allies marched in cities all over North America Saturday, bringing people from across the spectrum together to stand for equality and justice. It was the third annual network of women\u2019s marches that sprang out of the shock and alarm after the election of U.S. President Donald Trump. To ensure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[5773,801,7959,2427,3021,7960],"class_list":["post-31730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-ji","tag-anti-zionism","tag-antisemitism","tag-farrakhan","tag-racism","tag-women","tag-womens-march"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}