Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory and Bob Bland have stepped down as co-chairs of Women’s March, Inc. on July 15, according to a statement released on Sept. 16.
The Women’s March said in a statement on their website that Sarsour, Mallory and Bland “will transition off the Women’s March Board and onto other projects focused on advocacy within their respective organizations.” Bland, who served as co-president of the Women’s March along with Mallory, told The Washington Post that the leadership was in the works for some time.
Sarsour, who is a surrogate for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) presidential campaign, told the Post, “I am grateful to the women who stepped up to shepherd the Women’s March. This is what women supporting women looks like.”
Co-chair Carmen Perez is staying with the Women’s March.
The statement went onto list the names of 16 new board members for the organization.
The Women’s March has been plagued with accusations of anti-Semitism, stemming from Sarsour, Mallory and Perez expressing warmth toward Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and a December report from Tablet alleging that Mallory and Perez accused Jews of being behind the American slave trade, among other allegations of anti-Semitism.
Some of the reactions from the Jewish world include:
The thing that's shocking about the Women's March news is that the organization and the original leaders couldn't find a single resolution in which the original leaders stayed and the March successfully disavowed the anti-Semitism allegations. That's… just shocking.
— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) September 16, 2019
Man, the psychotic rage-benders aimed at those of us who were right about her from the beginning, as well as those who finally joined along the way to make sure they got some credit for it https://t.co/3tFxul404p
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) September 16, 2019
Wow. This never would have happened without @tabletmag's relentless reporting. https://t.co/iERpBGJvr5
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) September 16, 2019
Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action Agenda at the Simon Wiesenthal Center Rabbi Abraham Cooper said in a statement to the Journal that he’s “grateful” that the Women’s March is “taking back control from extremists who hijacked this vital American campaign for social justice, creating an anti-Semitic litmus test for social activism that denounces Zionism and demonizes Zionists.”
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.