CHICAGO – With all the news coverage Wednesday of Chicago's Women's March in January being cancelled, any casual news observer might think the cancellation was a new development. But the Chicago Women's March announced in November they weren't having a January 2019 gathering in Grant Park.
Their stated reasons were due to a lack of volunteers and energy after the outdoor rally they held in October, nothing to do with the Women's March leaders being soundly criticized for anti-Semetic speech and identification with Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan:
Despite the denial of any affiliation with Farrakhan, one of the Women's March leaders – Linda Sarsour – doth plead too loudly, critics say in the Washington Times
Linda Sarsour’s latest effort to distance the Women’s March leadership from Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhanmay have backfired.
A Women’s March national co-chair, Ms. Sarsour met with heavy skepticism after insisting that she has never met Mr. Farrakhan — or attended a Farrakhan speech — even though they both spoke at a rally he hosted in 2015.
“I for one, have NEVER EVER met the Minister but facts don’t matter and people want to throw the baby out with the bath water,” Ms. Sarsour said in a Saturday post on Facebook. “Discarding People is not how we transform hearts and eradicate antisemitism.”
As sharp-eyed social-media critics quickly pointed out, Ms. Sarsour spoke at Justice or Else, an October 2015 event at the National Mall organized by Mr. Farrakhan marking the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March.
However, the Chicago Tribune continues the coverage beat:
The move comes amid criticism over the past year about national Women's March leaders ties to the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan, who is based in Chicago. National leaders Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, Bob Bland, and Carmen Perez have been slow to condemn anti-Jewish rhetoric from speeches Farrakhan has made while they were in attendance. In one speech, Farrakhan praised Mallory and later said in the same speech that, "the powerful Jews are my enemy".
The Jewish Press writes:
Tablet magazine last week reported that Women’s March co-chairs Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez, at a November 2016 meeting, argued that Jewish people bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown people, and that Jews had been leaders of the American slave trade—both of which are myths popularized by a book titled The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, published by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.
African American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. called the book “the bible of the new anti-Semitism.”
