NOW No Longer a Donor to Women’s March Because ‘Clarification on Leadership is Essential’

NOW No Longer a Donor to Women’s March Because ‘Clarification on Leadership is Essential’

Ever since Tablet magazine published its investigation into the racism and anti-Semitism views of the Women’s March leaders the organization has bled support and people.

First the Washington state chapter closed. The New York Times finally acknowledged that leaders Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory harbor hatred toward Jews. Then the Chicago chapter announced it will not have a march in January.

Another blow came today as The National Organization for Women (NOW) announced it will no longer be a donor to the Women’s March until it resolves the questions surrounding its leadership.

So NOW is not cutting off all support, but it is cutting off support where it matters: MONEY.

This is NOW’s statement (emphasis mine):

The National Organization for Women (NOW) was proud to be a sponsor of the historic Women’s March that took place following Donald Trump’s inauguration, and of the subsequent March last year.

NOW has a long history of support for grassroots actions and street protest. NOW brought 750,000 abortion rights supporters to Washington in 1992 for the first March for Women’s Lives, and we worked with other partners to organize an even larger protest in 2004 when a record 1.5 million people gathered for what was then the largest protest in U.S. history.

The Women’s March was created to be a beacon of inclusion amid an administration intent on division. NOW will continue to support the Women’s March Unity Principles, and we will participate and organize members to attend the March. However, we will withhold direct financial support until the current questions regarding leadership are resolved.

It makes me sick that NOW decided to still honor the Unity Principles of the Women’s March:

“We must create a society in which all women — including Black women, Indigenous women, poor women, immigrant women, disabled women, Muslim women, lesbian, queer and trans women — are free,” it read.

Yeah, no mention of Jewish women or white women.

One of the original founders of the Women’s March told Tablet magazine about an incident at an early meeting (emphasis mine):

At the end of January, according to multiple sources, there was an official debriefing at Mallory’s apartment. In attendance were Mallory, Evvie Harmon, Breanne Butler, Vanessa Wruble, Cassady Fendlay, Carmen Perez and Linda Sarsour. They should have been basking in the afterglow of their massive success, but—according to Harmon—the air was thick with conflict. “We sat in that room for hours,” Harmon told Tablet recently. “Tamika told us that the problem was that there were five white women in the room and only three women of color, and that she didn’t trust white women. Especially white women from the South. At that point, I kind of tuned out because I was so used to hearing this type of talk from Tamika. But then I noticed the energy in the room changed. I suddenly realized that Tamika and Carmen were facing Vanessa [Wruble], who was sitting on a couch, and berating her—but it wasn’t about her being white. It was about her being Jewish. ‘Your people this, your people that.’ I was raised in the South and the language that was used is language that I’m very used to hearing in rural South Carolina. Just instead of against black people, against Jewish people. They even said to her ‘your people hold all the wealth.’ You could hear a pin drop. It was awful.”

Wruble spoke to The New York Times about the meeting. Whatever Page and Mallory told Wruble troubled her to the point that she Googled to see if there is any truth to the anti-Semitic views of those two women:

“I was taken aback,” said Ms. Wruble in her first extensive interview about her experience organizing the Women’s March. “I thought, ‘Maybe there are things I don’t know about my own people.’”

She said she went home that night and searched Google to read about the Jewish role in the slave trade. Up popped a review of “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and the Jews,” a 1991 book by Mr. Farrakhan, which asserts that Jews were especially culpable. Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard professor, has called the book the “bible of the new anti-Semitism.”

Everything got worse when Sarsour jumped on board. You know, the woman who loves and adores Rasmea Odeh, the terrorist who murdered two Jewish boys in Israel decades ago.

Wruble didn’t say which one, but one leader told her that the group “really couldn’t center Jewish women in this or we might turn off Black Lives Matter.” That group stands with the Palestinians against Israel.

To make matters worse, Wruble found out that Nation of Islam, the hate group led by disgusting anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan, were the security guards:

At one point, Ms. Wruble said she asked about security for the march and was told by the leaders that the Nation of Islam would be providing it.

“I said, ‘You are going to open up the march to intense criticism,’” Ms. Wruble said, warning that it would be a red flag for Jews. She said they dismissed her concerns in a heated email exchange and accused her of unfairly maligning the Nation of Islam.

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