Wasserman Schultz: Count Me Out of Women’s March

She's not happy with leadership's refusal to 'repudiate anti-Semitism,' hate speech
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 18, 2019 1:22 PM CST
Wasserman Schultz: Why I'm Skipping Women’s March
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, speaks during a news conference on June 23, 2018, in Homestead, Fla.   (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Debbie Wasserman Schultz's first experience with the Women's March left her feeling "electrified." Now, two years later, she's ditching the group, specifically its leaders. The former DNC chair explains why in an opinion piece for USA Today, saying she's become increasingly concerned about what she says is a refusal of the national march's four co-chairs—Bob Bland, Linda Sarsour, Carmen Perez, and Tamika Mallory— to "completely repudiate anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry. I cannot walk shoulder to shoulder with leaders who lock arms with outspoken peddlers of hate," she writes. "Most troubling" to Wasserman Schultz: Sarsour, Perez, and Mallory's ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has made inflammatory and anti-Semitic statements about Jews.

Wasserman Schultz doesn't like, for instance, that Mallory has not only not clearly denounced Farrakhan, but gone to see him speak and posted support for him online—she's even called him the "GOAT" (Greatest of All Time). "It should not be difficult to condemn this hate speech and the person who constantly voices it," Wasserman Schultz writes. Sarsour, meanwhile, has engaged in rhetoric that Wasserman Schultz calls "hurtful" to Jewish women by claiming some of those women "always choose their allegiance to Israel over their commitment to democracy and free speech." What she plans on doing instead of participating in the 2019 march, set for Saturday in DC, is to link up with women who've joined smaller local marches. "We must demand the same principles from our movement as we do from our society." Read the full piece here. (More Debbie Wasserman Schultz stories.)

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