The Southern Poverty Law Center announced that it will not partner with the Women’s March on Saturday amid reports of anti-Semitism throughout the group’s leadership.
Jen Fuson, a spokeswoman for the SPLC, told The Daily Beast, “other projects were a priority,” but she added that they would partner with the localized marches where they have offices. (RELATED: REPORT: Women’s March Full Of Anti-Semites, Has Ties To Nation Of Islam)
Back in December, a Tablet Magazine investigative report revealed that two of the Women’s March founders, Carmen Perez and Tamika Mallory, accosted a Jewish woman who was in a meeting and spouted false allegations that Jewish people “bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown people” and “were proven to have been leaders of the American slave trade.”
The report also revealed connections between some of the founders and Nation of Islam leader and known anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. Last year, Farrakhan compared Jews to “termites” in a video that he posted on Twitter.
Demonstrators protest during the Women’s March along Pennsylvania Avenue January 21, 2017 in Washington, DC.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters spearheaded by women’s rights groups demonstrated across the US to send a defiant message to US President Donald Trump. (JOSHUA LOTT/AFP/Getty Images)
The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington (JCRCGW) and Zioness, two organizations that identify as progressive, previously told The Daily Caller that they also would not support the march. Both groups specified that they would not support the national organization, but would support a march if it’s one of the local ones.
Guila Franklin Siegel, the associate director of the JCRCGW, told TheDC, “We’re in a situation where we completely support the message of our local march but attending the march means joining in with a crowd that is going to be led by women whose behavior we find and actions we find unconscionable.”
