The National MS Society has come under fire over the last two weeks after Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik reported on an incident involving an elderly lifelong volunteer who says she was dismissed because she asked questions about pronoun usage in the context of their DEI policies.
In mid-January, 90-year-old Fran Itkoff received a letter in her email inbox from the organization’s Community Engagement Manager, Kali Kumor, notifying her that due to an alleged “failure to abide by our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion guidelines” they had “made the difficult decision” to tell her to “step down from your volunteer position, effective immediately.”
Incredibly, though they no longer want Itkoff and the Lakewood/Long Beach Self-Help Group she leads to be “formally affiliated” with the organization, they told her that she and her group were “still welcome to attend and participate in the Society’s events and programs”:
Raichik posted a short clip of the interview she did with Itkoff and Itkoff’s daughter, Elle Hamilton, to Twitter last week. In it, they talked about how the dismissal email came on a Friday afternoon just before 5 p.m. when there would be no one around to take a phone call or respond to an email. Itkoff also explained that the reason she asked about pronouns was because she saw them used after names on Society literature and wanted to know why:
In the full interview, Itkoff talked about how her husband had MS and was the founder of the self-help group that she began heading up after he passed away 20 years ago. She says she has been volunteering on behalf of MS patients for 60 years:
Not long after the story broke, the National MS Society began doing damage control behind the scenes, boasting about their “inclusive” policies while claiming they would never part ways with a volunteer for simply asking questions. They also told employees and volunteers not to respond to media inquiries and insinuated that Itkoff’s alleged comments about pronouns made staff members feel “unsafe”:
A week later, they posted a statement – the replies to which were limited on Twitter – explaining their side of the story:
Here’s what they wrote:
For more than 75 years, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society has advanced one bold vision—a world free of MS. Through thousands of volunteers, dedicated staff, and generous donors, we live that vision every day. We welcome anyone to join us to advance that mission. As an organization, we firmly believe that we best serve and support those living with MS by creating a space that welcomes all. This is especially true for self-help group leaders, who are responsible for leading meetings for people affected by MS to confide in and support one another. Recently, a volunteer, Fran Itkoff, was asked to step away from her role because of statements that were viewed as not aligning with our policy of inclusion. Fran has been a valued member of our volunteer team for more than 60 years. We believe that our staff acted with the best of intentions and did their best to navigate a challenging issue. As an organization, we are in a continued conversation about assuring that our diversity, equity and inclusion policies evolve in service of our mission, and will reach out to Fran in service of this goal.
They “will reach out to Fran in service of this goal”? They’ll be lucky if Mrs. Itkoff doesn’t sue them into oblivion over what they did to her.
Not surprisingly, some of the players in the MS Society involved in what happened are either stepping down or making their social media profiles disappear for some reason:
Blaze Media noted that the MS Society went full woke in 2020 and never looked back:
In 2020, the MS Society began prompting employees to recite its DEI statement before all meetings; it removed Columbus Day holiday and added Juneteenth as a paid holiday; and it started having race-based summits. The next year, the MS Society added “pronoun options” to standard email signature templates and ramped up its obsession with racial politics.By 2022, it began holding Hispanic summits extra to its annual black summit and established a zero-tolerance inclusion policy underscoring it is “committed to embedding diversity, equity and inclusion in everything we do.”
In response to what happened to Fran Itkoff, many have said they will no longer donate to the MS Society and are looking to put their money into groups that are focused more on finding the cure for MS than on forcing DEI down the throats of their dedicated, hard-working volunteers:
Fox News senior meteorologist Janice Dean, who suffers from MS, is also demanding answers:
Excluding someone in the name of “inclusivity” is just a terrible look. The MS Society needs to get its priorities straight and get back to focusing on what matters, which is helping to find cures and save lives.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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