To the “Founder” of Women’s March…
To the self-proclaimed founder of the “Women’s March”,
I respect that in 2016, you posted a call to your Facebook friends for women to march in D.C. first, before anyone else, and that you had some kind of vision of equality in your mind when you did so.
But you did not author the Women’s March Unity Principles, and it is deeply inappropriate for you to take credit for the work of the 24 women who did.
Yesterday, you accused the four women who are National Co-Chairs of the Women’s March on Washington of “steering the movement away” from it’s intent and you said that, as a “founder” you wanted to bring the focus “back” to “our” Unity Principles.
I am not part of the Women’s March, but I saw firsthand the organizing that happened at the office of The Gathering for Justice — Carmen Perez is the one who put her organization on the line to house and incubate your idea. It was The Gathering for Justice that grounded the March in the ideology of Dr. King, sharing the principles of nonviolence by which we operate.
Teresa, you were notably absent from the painstaking hours of discussion, debate and revision between 24 women from diverse communities and backgrounds that resulted in those Unity Principles. Those women were convened by Carmen Perez and Linda Sarsour, who guided them through a creation process rooted in the movement-building wisdom of the Civil Rights leaders who mentored them. In addition to the Unity Principles, Carmen, Linda and Tamika brought on over 500 partner organizations and got commitments from Gloria Steinem, Harry Belafonte, Dolores Huerta and other leaders of your generation to the Honorary Co-Chairs of the March.
I recall that you began by appropriating the name of a march organized by Black women — the Million Women March. This blind and divisive maneuver hurt the black community, and you turned it over to women of color to clean up the mess. Those women took that mess on — and they got Dr. Bernice King’s blessing to honor the 1964 march her father, Dr. King, organized, and only then did it become the “Women’s March on Washington”. Then they organized the historic, global march of 5 million people for the rights of women of all backgrounds, ages, identities, faiths, statues and abilities.
You benefit from the credit you have received due to their labor to bring forth a vision of unity crafted by women movement leaders. And you use your “founder” status to take credit for the most intersectional and visionary platform for feminist governance that the world has ever seen.
I understand that you want to acknowledge the pain of the Jewish community by denouncing anti-Semitism. As the child of a Jewish father and a Persian mother, I do not accept anti-Semitism or Islamophobia. I am a lifelong ally of the gay and lesbian community, and I have learned how to become an accomplice in fighting anti-black racism. I have watched the Women’s March reject anti-Semitism, homophobia and all forms of bias over and over again. And I cannot and will not sit idly by while you use your platform to smear women of color and erase the decades of leadership that each of them can stand upon.
For me, the inspiring promise of the Women’s March on Washington was that white women were ready to stop enacting these tired old patterns of dominance and erasure and become actual allies and accomplices in the fight against oppression. Your demand that these women step down does not combat bias, it enforces it. And what is terrifying to watch is how the narrative that you and others fuel increases the intensity of harassment, violence and threats on their life — things that are already ever-present for women of color who dare to act as leaders. These statements are not hyperbole — I have witnessed these threats first hand. Linda can’t even walk down the street with her children for fear of their safety. You have enabled this whether you meant to or not.
If we are in agreement that we all want to build a world that is safe, free, just and equitable for all, then I ask you Teresa, how are we going to do that? Perhaps you can clarify your unifying vision for leading us forth. The path as I have seen it is to build deep relationships between each other, because we know dividing women against each other has always served those in power. I believe we change this by giving each other the benefit of calling one another in — because we all have each other’s personal contact information — rather than engaging in public grandstanding to attack each other. I believe we change this by investing in the love and compassion necessary to understand each other and engage in respectful exchanges that help each other grow.
