The Women’s March is still scheduled to take place on Saturday on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., but the anti-President Donald Trump event has been losing the support of sponsors, including the Democratic National Committee, following charges its leaders are anti-Semitic.
The Daily Beast reported:
The Democratic National Committee has become the latest group to removed its name from the list of sponsors of the Women’s March less than 24 hours after one of the March’s leaders refused to denounce Louis Farrakhan during a nationally televised interview.
The committee’s name no longer appears on the Women’s March partner list on Monday, after march co-presidents Tamika Mallory and Bob Bland appeared on The View to address the criticism of their leadership and allegations of anti-semitism that have been levied against them by former members of their leadership team.
As recently as the morning of January 13, 2019, the DNC was listed among the ‘2019 Women’s March Sponsors,’ according to an internet archive search, but it is not longer on the website as of Tuesday. A DNC official declined to comment on the timing of the removal of their name from the list but the committee offered the following about its decision for dropping out of the march.
“The DNC stands in solidarity with all those fighting for women’s rights and holding the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers across the country accountable,” Sabrina Singh, DNC deputy communications director, said in the Daily Beast report. “Women are on the front lines of fighting back against this administration and are the core of our Democratic Party.”
Mallory has praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a known anti-Semite.
Linda Sarsour, also a leader of the Women’s March, is a Palestinian American and outspoken critic of Israel.
Instead of condemning Farrakhan on The View, Mallory praised him again for “what he’s done in black communities.”
Other left-wing groups that have disappeared from the sponsors’ list, according to the Daily Beast, are the Southern Poverty Law Center, Emily’s List, Human Rights Campaign, NARAL, and the Center for American Progress.
“Less than half of the nearly 550 partners listed in 2018 have returned to support the third march,” the Daily Beast reported.
The Jewish publication Forward also reported on the controversy:
A Jewish Democratic operative told the Forward that Jewish, pro-Israel and LGBT groups had been lobbying Democrats for months to disaffiliate from from the Women’s March over its leaders’ ties to the anti-Semitic and homophobic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
The operative added that top party leaders grew more receptive two months ago after a Tablet investigation alleged that the Women’s March leaders were themselves anti-Semitic, and not just allied with a prominent anti-Semite.
The DNC had not been a sponsor of the march in previous years, though DNC chairman Tom Perez spoke at the Women’s March main event last year in Las Vegas. The DNC was listed for the 2019 march as one of 175 partner organizations in a tweet from the Women’s March account on January 10. But by the 15th, the organization was no longer listed on the Women’s March website.
BuzzFeed News asked 11 Democrats who have presidential ambitions about the Women’s March and reported on Tuesday only four had responded and all said they would not attend the march – Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Kamala Harris (D-CA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Cory Booker (D-NY).
As Breitbart News reported “sister marches” across the nation, have dropped out of Saturday’s march.
So far, marches are canceled in Chicago, New Orleans, Washington state, and California, with the latter now defending itself after claiming one of the reasons it halted the event was too many white people were involved.
The Times-Standard in Northern California reported on the canceled march in the mostly white Humboldt County:
“After meeting periodically for several months, it became clear we were lacking a leadership group that properly represented our community,” event organizer Allison Edrington told the Times-Standard.
The Women’s March website is void of any mention of affiliate marches dropping out or sponsors pulling support.
“1/19/19: The #WomensWave It’s time to march again,” the website said.
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