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Three Leaders of Women's March Group Step Down After Controversies

Three leaders of the Women’s March on Washington who helped organize one of the largest mass mobilizations in United States history following the inauguration of Donald Trump have stepped down from the organization’s board after years of controversy.

Three Leaders of Women's March Group Step Down After Controversies

Their departure comes as the organization that grew out of anger over Trump’s election tries to move past its history of discord and focus on the 2020 presidential and congressional races.

Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian American activist; Tamika Mallory, an African American gun control activist; and Bob Bland, a white fashion designer, are stepping down from the organization’s board, the organization announced in a news release Monday.

Their departure, earlier reported by The Washington Post, comes after complaints from some local women’s march leaders that the New York-based group was too insular to lead a national movement, and after some of the earliest organizers of the march on Washington accused Mallory and a fourth co-chair, Carmen Perez-Jordan, of making anti-Semitic remarks.

Perez-Jordan, a Latina activist who organizes against mass incarceration, will remain on the Women’s March board.

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The four co-chairs are credited with helping to change the face of American feminism by highlighting the voices of women of color, as well as sexual minorities. But they were also accused of concentrating power in the hands of an insular group of New York-based activists.

The group angered some activists in other parts of the country when they tried to trademark the name Women’s March in the wake of the 2017 march, which was put together by loosely connected volunteers, many of whom found one another on Facebook. Millions took the streets in simultaneous marches in Washington and hundreds of cities around the world.

After the 2017 march, the four co-chairs ousted one of the group’s earliest organizers, Vanessa Wruble, who is Jewish. Wruble later helped establish a new organization and made accusations of anti-Semitism. Mallory’s close ties to the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who is respected in the black community but widely reviled in the Jewish community for virulently anti-Semitic remarks, had long raised eyebrows in New York.

The accusations, made public in advance of the 2019 march, heightened a sense of infighting. In some cities, including New York and Philadelphia, two separate women’s marches were held.

In a statement, Sarsour, Mallory and Bland expressed pride in what they had accomplished.

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“Our mission was to build a powerful institution that defied the status quo, centered the leadership of women of color and united diverse women around a set of principles that are intersectional, visionary and bold and we feel accomplished,” they wrote. “Grateful for the brilliant movement leaders who have stepped up to continue to shepherd this organization and water the seeds that we planted. We look forward to spending the next 14 months building power and engaging voters nationwide to win this critical election.”

Wruble said in a statement: “There’s a lot of work to be done as we approach 2020. We can’t afford to be divided — and I welcome everyone to join us as we march on the polls again.”

The New York-based Women’s March group announced Monday that 17 new board members from across the country had been chosen in July through a national search. They include Charlene A. Carruthers, a founder of the Black Youth Project 100, and Shawna Knipper, a Women’s March organizer in Pennsylvania.

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