As a married man, I know quite well that behind every moderately tolerable man is a moderately tolerant woman. But as a political analyst and investigative journalist, I also happen to know that behind every feminist organization is a male organizer.
An incredible Tablet investigative report documents the origins of the Women’s March. The original female activists, some Jewish, were sidelined in favor of anti-Semites like Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez. But where did these Farrakhan loving feminists come from?
A man connected them.
When Wruble relayed her concern that the nascent women’s 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 nonprofit—a group called The Gathering for Justice, where he and Mallory sat on the board of directors, and Perez served as the executive director.
Linda Sarsour, another colleague from The Gathering for Justice network, was not present for these initial meetings but joined the Women’s March as a co-chair a short time later.
And GFJ effectively took over and became the Women’s March, another familiar pattern among lefty groups.
Within a few months of the original marches, key figures who came from outside or stood apart from the inner circle of the Justice League, an initiative of The Gathering for Justice, left the organization. And many of those involved began questioning why it was that, among the many women of various backgrounds interested in being involved in the March’s earliest days, power had consolidated in the hands of leadership who all had previous ties to one another; who were all roughly the same age; who would praise a man who has argued that it’s women’s responsibility to dress modestly so as to avoid tempting men; and, at least in one case, who defended Bill Cosby as the victim of a conspiracy.
The questions started to be more practical, as well. At some point during that very first meeting in Chelsea, Perez suggested that the Justice League’s parent entity, The Gathering for Justice—where she, Mallory, and Skolnik all had roles—set up a “fiscal sponsorship” over the Women’s March to handle its finances.
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But the analysis eventually offered by The Daily Beast revealed a more complicated picture. It showed, for instance, that revenue at The Gathering for Justice, the organization that acted as the Women’s March’s fiscal sponsor, increased by more than six times between 2016 and 2017, from $167,021 to more than $1.8 million. It was not immediately clear how much of the increase involved Women’s March-specific funds. Other details too were omitted from The Intercept article which, perhaps due to being rushed out, never mentioned The Gathering for Justice. It’s a particularly notable omission given that the Women’s March annual report itself notes: “The majority of the 2017 Women’s March on Washington was paid for by our fiscal sponsor, The Gathering for Justice.”
And that’s how a man helped anti-Semites and racists take over the Women’s March.
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