The 2019 Women’s March is scheduled to take place this Saturday. The main event will start in Washington, D.C.’s Freedom Plaza, where demonstrators are expected to rally and eventually march toward the Trump Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue.
But although Saturday marks the third Women’s March, attendance is projected to be much lower than the previous two years. Much of this is because Women’s March, the organization behind the event, has been marred with controversy after its chairs were accused of a number of issues, ranging from mismanagement to anti-Semitism. Many supporters and partner groups, including the Democratic National Committee, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and EMILY’s List, have pulled out of the upcoming D.C. schedule.
How did this go from the largest protest in history, to one that might be starting to unravel? And what’s happening in states across the country? To find out what’s happening near you, type in your zip code here.
January 2017The movement began with rage: a lawyer in Hawaii, Teresa Shook, and a fashion executive in Brooklyn, Bob Bland, took to Facebook to urge friends to protest Donald Trump’s inauguration. Soon they joined forces, and more women got involved, and together got the permits and port-a-potties and everything else that was needed to stage the largest single-day protest in the nation’s history, the day after President Trump’s inauguration. While there were critiques that the white women were easily jumping into a space where black women had worked for decades, organizers—led by Bland and her other national co-chairs, Tamika Mallory, and Linda Sarsour—worked to build an inclusive coalition of women of all ages, ethnicities, religions, locations, sexualities. Glamour honored the national organizers as Women of the Year for sparking a global movement.
February 2018CNN’s Jake Tapper tweets clips from acontroversial speech given by Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, in which Farrakhan makes several anti-semitic comments. Tapper notes that Mallory was at the event and that she posted photos of it on Instagram. Criticism of Mallory, and other chairs connected to Farrakhan, spreads on social media.
March 2018The Women’s March organization issues a statement, saying, “Minister Farrakhan’s statements about Jewish, queer, and trans people are not aligned with the Women’s March Unity principles. The world Women’s March seeks to build is one free from anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, racism, and all forms of social violence.” However, many people take issue with the fact that the statement does not formally denounce Farrakhan. Some call for the co-chairs to step down.
Mallory addresses the backlash in a piece for News One.
October 2018Alyssa Milano brings the Farrakhan controversy up in an interview with The Advocate. Referring to the march’s chairs, she explains that it is “unfortunate that none of them have come forward against him at this point,” and says she will not speak at the next march: “Any time that there is any bigotry or anti-Semitism in that respect, it needs to be called out and addressed. I’m disappointed in the leadership of the Women’s March that they haven’t done it adequately.”
November 2018The Women’s March organization releases another statement, this time defending Mallory and Sarsour. “Women’s March wouldn’t exist without the leadership of women of color, and we stand with Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory,” the statement reads. “Women’s March leaders reject anti-Semitism in all its forms. We recognize the danger of hate rhetoric by public figures. We want to say emphatically that we do not support or endorse statements made by Minister Louis Farrakhan about women, Jewish and LGBTQ communities.”
Sarsour also speaks out through a statement on November 20, saying, “Every member of our movement matters to us—including our incredible Jewish and LGBTQ members. We are deeply sorry for the harm we have caused, but we see you, we love you, and we are fighting with you.”
Meanwhile, the Women’s March discloses financial records to several publications after being hit with accusations of mismanagement. The organization’s chief operating officer, Rachel O’Leary Carmona, said in a statement quoted in the Intercept that releasing the documents was part of a transparency effort. “The power of the Women’s March is in our people. We might not have the most funding, but we have millions of passionate, strong, and diverse women who deeply believe in building an intersectional women’s movement so that we can all get free,” she said.
December 2018Tablet Magazine, an online Jewish publication, publishes a lengthy, 10,000-plus word article that highlights many of the issues surrounding the march and its leaders. The piece accuses Mallory and Perez of making anti-Semitic remarks on more than one occasion.
In a New York Times article a few weeks later, Brooklyn-based activist Vanessa Wruble says she was pushed out of the organization and discusses some of the early schism in the Women’s March. She implied her Jewish identity played a role in her ouster. She has since gone on to help launch another women’s organization called March On.
January 2019Mallory and Bland make an appearance on The View to discuss the accusations against the organization. Both deny an anti-semitic exchange that reportedly took place. In a heated exchange with Meghan McCain, Mallory says that Farrakhan’s words were not her own: “It’s not the way that I speak, it is not how I organize. And I think it is very clear, over the 20 years of my own personal activism, my own personal track record, of who I am. And I should never be judged through the lens of a man.”
Following the segment, the Daily Beast reports that many of the groups that partnered with the 2018 march would not return for 2019, and that one of the largest supporters, the Democratic National Committee, had pulled out.
Despite the controversies, the Women’s March posted in a tweet on Jan. 16 that while the event would relocate because of snow, it would continue. But the conflict has affected other marches outside of Washington, D.C., most notably in New York, where there will be two separate marches since organizers could not come to an agreement. (A third rally, organized by Rise and Resist will take place in Grand Central Station, designed to be more inclusive and accessible for people with disabilities.) Some advocates say women still shouldn’t sit out the events on the 19th: “March with one of them,” Gloria Steinem told the New York Times, “But march.”
