Tamika Mallory

Tamika Danielle Mallory (born June 8, 1980)[1] is an American activist. She was one of the leading organizers of the 2017 Women's March, for which she and her three other co-chairs were recognized in the Time 100 that year.[2] Mallory is a proponent of gun control, feminism, and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Tamika Mallory
Mallory in 2020
Born
Tamika Danielle Mallory

(1980-06-08) June 8, 1980
New York City, U.S.
OccupationActivist
Years active2002–present
Known forNational chair for the Women's March

In 2018, Mallory drew criticism for her attendance at an event with, and past praise for, controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, which prompted calls for her resignation from the 2019 Women's March.[3][4][5][6][7] Following later allegations of anti-semitism, Mallory left the organization in September 2019,[8] but it was reported that, given the bylaws of the Women's March, Mallory simply left after the expiration of her tenure, not because of the allegations of anti-semitism.[9]

Personal life

Mallory was born in Harlem, New York City, to Stanley and Voncile Mallory[10] in New York City. She grew up in the Manhattanville Houses in Manhattan and moved to Co-Op City in the Bronx when she was 14.[11] Her parents were founding members and activists of Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network (NAN), a leading civil rights organization throughout the United States.[12] Their work in NAN influenced Mallory and her interests in social justice and civil rights.

Mallory is a single mother to her son Tarique.[11] Her son's father, Jason Ryans, was murdered in 2001.[13] Mallory explains that her experience with NAN taught her to react to this tragedy with activism. Her son is a member of NAN.[14]

Political activism

At age 11, Mallory became a member of NAN to learn more about the civil rights movement. By the time Mallory turned 15, she was a volunteer staff member at NAN. Mallory went on to become the youngest Executive Director at NAN in 2011. After working at NAN for 14 years,[12] Mallory stepped down from her position as executive director in 2013 to follow her own activism goals, but still takes part in NAN's work, attending rallies and recruiting members.

In 2014, Mallory was selected to serve on the transition committee of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. During that time, she helped create the NYC Crisis Management System, an official gun violence prevention program that awards $20 million annually to gun violence prevention organizations.[15] She also served as the co-chair for a new initiative through the Crisis Management System, Gun Violence Awareness Month.[16]

Mallory is the president of Mallory Consulting, a strategic planning and event management firm in New York City. She is on the board of directors for Gathering for Justice, an organization aimed at ending child incarceration and working to eliminate policies that produce mass incarceration.[17]

In 2018, Mallory criticized Starbucks for including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization whose stated mission is to "fight anti-Semitism and all forms of hate",[18] in a company-wide racial bias training after the arrest of two black men at a Starbucks in Philadelphia. In a tweet, she accused the ADL of "attack[ing] black and brown people" and wrote, "ADL sends US police to Israel to learn their military practices. This is deeply troubling. Let’s not even talk abt their attacks against .@blacklivesmatter.”[19] Starbucks subsequently dropped the ADL from its anti-bias training, a decision Liel Leibovitz of Tablet said was "giving in to bigotry."[20][21]

2017 Women's March

Mallory, Bob Bland, Carmen Perez, and Linda Sarsour organized the 2017 Women's March, a worldwide protest on January 21, 2017. The march was a protest against the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump, and also advocated women's rights, immigration reform, LGBTQIA rights, health-care reform, environmental reform, racial justice, and racial equality.

The leaders of the Women's March mobilized in Washington, D.C., and sister marches occurred worldwide. An estimated 500,000 people attended the Washington, D.C., march.[22] The Women's March website said that total worldwide participation was nearly five million.[23] According to The Independent, the march may have been the largest single-day protest in U.S. history.[24] Sarsour, Mallory, Bland and Perez were recognized in the Time 100 of 2017.[2]

Organization and planning

The Women's March idea formed after Trump's election. A grandmother in Hawaii, Teresa Shook, created a Facebook event for a march in Washington, D.C., following the inauguration. Meanwhile, Bob Bland, a mother living in New York City, also created an event. Within a single day hundreds of thousands of individuals were "attending" the march's Facebook event. The surge of interest catalyzed the organizing that led to the 2017 Women's March.

Bland's and Shook's events were merged. Bland reached out to Mallory, Perez, and Sarsour, to include voices of color. The march organizers sought to integrate many different leaders and voices to create a decentralized structure. The intention was to incorporate people from every walk of life.

Mallory has said that while the march was in direct response to Trump's election, its larger concern was social problems in the United States.[25] The march gave women, minorities, people of color, LGBTQIA, and others a space to voice their concerns, fears, and feelings. Mallory explains that she took on this responsibility because she "wanted to ensure that Black women's voices are upheld, uplifted, and that our issues are addressed, but this cannot happen unless we take a seat at the table".[26]

Mallory's work within the Women's March was geared toward creating space for unrepresented voices in social activism. She felt that previous marches had failed to recognize the intersectional aspects within social justice, such as race, class, gender, nationality, and sexuality. According to Mallory, the organizers worked to make the march as inclusive as possible in order to promote the most change.[27]

One of the largest supporters of the march was Planned Parenthood. Mallory explains that they partnered with Planned Parenthood because they "provide women with life-saving health services".[28]

Later activities

After the march, the organizers published a "10 Actions for the First 100 Days" campaign, in order to continue the momentum of social activism gained from the march.[29] The first action was to write a postcard to Senators about issues of concern. Organizers provided a template on their website along with ways to send the postcards.[30] The second action was to either host or attend a "huddle," an informal meeting to discuss ways to transform feelings into local and national action.[31] The third action was to attend or host a "Hear Our Voice" event, a more formal version of action 2, in order to stimulate continuous change.[32]

2019 Women's March

Mallory was one of the co-presidents of the 2019 Women's March. She assumed leadership of the march along with her co-chairs from the 2017 March: Linda Sarsour, Carmen Perez, and Bob Bland.[4]

Mallory has been criticized for her relationship with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and support for Assata Shakur, a former Black Liberation Army member convicted of murder.[33][34][35] On February 25, 2018, Mallory attended a Saviours' Day speech led by Farrakhan where he made various anti-Semitic remarks, and later posted positive comments about the event on social media accounts.[36][37] This led some supporters of the march to call for Mallory and other Women's March leaders to resign.[4] In December 2018, The New York Times reported that "charges of anti-Semitism" stemming partly from the Farrakhan issue as well as Mallory's allegedly berating a Jewish organizer of the Women's March "are now roiling the movement and overshadowing plans for more marches next month". Mallory has disputed that they made such remarks.[4]

Mallory responded by releasing a statement that condemned racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia, also writing, "I do not wish to be held responsible for the words of others when my own history shows that I stand in opposition to them." She added that she believed building coalitions required working with people with whom she disagreed.[38][39][40] An early Women's March co-founder, Vanessa Wruble, said that she had been "pushed out" of the Women's March by Mallory and others because of her Jewish identity.[4] Another organizer, Evvie Harmon, said that she witnessed Mallory and her co-chair Carmen Perez berating Wruble, saying "your people hold all the wealth", remarks that Harmon described in an account to The New York Times and Tablet.[41][4] Mallory and Perez disputed that they made those remarks or that Wruble was mistreated for being Jewish.[4] On The View, Mallory stated that she didn't agree with all of Farrakhan's statements and wouldn't use his language, but declined to condemn his previous antisemitic statements.[42] In an interview with Margaret Hoover, Mallory refused to say that Israel has a right to exist.[43]

References
  1. "Tamika Mallory". Archives of Women's Political Communication. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  2. Al-Sibai, Noor. "The Women's March Organizers Made The 'TIME' 100 Most Influential List". Bustle. Retrieved December 31, 2018.
  3. "America's Midterms — The Blue Wave - Manhattan Neighborhood Network". www.mnn.org. Retrieved March 22, 2019.
  4. Stockman, Farah (December 23, 2018). "Women's March Roiled by Accusations of Anti-Semitism". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 31, 2018.
  5. "Women's March leader defends controversial relationship with Louis Farrakhan". ABC News. January 14, 2019. Retrieved January 14, 2019.
  6. Flood, Brian (January 14, 2019). "'The View' grills Women's March co-founder Tamika Mallory over ties to Louis Farrakhan". Fox News. Retrieved January 14, 2019.
  7. Wines, Michael; Stockman, Farah (January 19, 2019). "Smaller Crowds Turn Out for Third Annual Women’s March Events". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 20, 2019.
  8. Stockman, Farah (September 16, 2019). "Three Leaders of Women's March Group Step Down After Controversies". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 22, 2019.
  9. "Women's March Did Not Cut Ties With Tamika Mallory. Here's The Real Story". News One. September 18, 2019. Retrieved May 31, 2020.
  10. "Tamika Mallory: Young and powerful new executive director of NAN". Retrieved July 6, 2017.
  11. Barker, Cryil (October 24, 2013). "Tamika Mallory: The Beauty of Activism". Amsterdam News. Retrieved April 21, 2017.
  12. Keck, Catie (January 20, 2017). "Meet Tamika Mallory, the Lifelong Activist Who Organized the Women's March on Washington". Complex. Retrieved January 22, 2017.
  13. Einbinder, Nicole (July 13, 2017). "This Is Why Hundreds Of Women Are Going After The NRA". Bustle. Retrieved March 22, 2019.
  14. Serwer, Adam. "Why Tamika Mallory Won't Condemn Farrakhan". The Atlantic. Retrieved March 13, 2018.
  15. "De Blasio Administration, City Council Expand Citywide Initiative to Reduce Gun Violence, Launch Gun Violence Crisis Management System". New York City Government. City Hall. August 13, 2014. Retrieved April 21, 2017.
  16. Odesanya, Olayemi. "Tamika Mallory and Nicole Paultre-Bell host third Black Lives Matter Summit at LaGuardia Community College". New York Amsterdam News. Retrieved May 2, 2017.
  17. "The Gathering for Justice". Gathering for Justice. Retrieved April 21, 2017.
  18. "Who We Are". Anti-Defamation League. Retrieved January 15, 2019.
  19. Pink, Aiden (April 18, 2018). "Women's March Leaders Slam Starbucks For Tapping ADL To Defuse Racism Furor". The Forward.
  20. Andrew Hanna. "Starbucks drops Jewish group from bias training". POLITICO. Retrieved January 15, 2019.
  21. "The ADL Kicked Out of Leading Starbucks' Diversity Training". Tablet Magazine. April 30, 2018. Retrieved January 15, 2019.
  22. Wallace, Tim; Parlapiano, Alicia. "Crowd Scientists Say Women's March in Washington Had 3 Times as Many People as Trump's Inauguration". The New York Times. Retrieved May 2, 2017.
  23. "Sister Marches". Women's March on Washington.
  24. Broomfield, Matt (January 23, 2017). "Women's March against Donald Trump is the largest day of protests in US history, say political scientists". Independent. Retrieved April 24, 2017.
  25. Wilson, Wendy L. (January 23, 2017). "Activist Tamika Mallory Speaks With EBONY on Women's March". Ebony. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  26. Wilson, Wendy L (January 23, 2017). "Activist Tamika Mallory Speaks With EBONY on Women's March". Ebony. Retrieved March 10, 2017.
  27. Cusumano, Katherine (January 19, 2017). "The Women of the Women's March: Meet the Activists Who Are Planning One of the Largest Demonstrations in American History". W Magazine. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  28. Wilson, Wendy L (January 23, 2017). "Women Marching for Justice in a New Era: A Chat With Activist Tamika Mallory". Ebony. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  29. Shamus, Kristen (January 22, 2017). "Women's March launches 10 actions for first 100 days". Detroit Free Press. USA Today. Retrieved April 24, 2017.
  30. "Action One – Postcards". Women's March on Washington. Retrieved April 24, 2017.
  31. "Action 2 – Huddle". Women's March on Washington. Retrieved April 24, 2017.
  32. "Action 3 – Hear Our Voice". Women's March on Washington. Retrieved April 24, 2017.
  33. Weiss, Bari (August 1, 2017). "When Progressives Embrace Hate". The New York Times.
  34. "The feminist Farrakhan fans who organized the Women's March". The Times of Israel.
  35. "Supporter of homophobic, anti-Semitic U.S. religious leader to speak at NDP convention".
  36. "Farrakhan Rails Against Jews, Israel, and the U.S. Government in Wide-Ranging Saviours' Day Speech". Anti-Defamation League.
  37. "Women's March Co-President Attends Louis Farrakhan Rally – Again". The Forward. Retrieved April 18, 2018.
  38. Lemieux, Jamilah (March 7, 2018). "[EXCLUSIVE] Tamika Mallory Speaks: 'Wherever My People Are Is Where I Must Be'". News One.
  39. Pagano, John-Paul (March 8, 2018). "The Women's March Has a Farrakhan Problem". The Atlantic. Retrieved December 27, 2018.
  40. Lang, Marissa J. (November 21, 2019). "Anger over Farrakhan ties prompts calls for Women's March leaders to resign". Washington Post. Retrieved November 27, 2018.
  41. McSweeney, Leah; Siegel, Jacob (December 10, 2018). "Is the Women's March Melting Down?". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved January 3, 2019.
  42. "Tamika Mallory fails to condemn Farrakhan's antisemitism on 'The View' - Diaspora - Jerusalem Post". www.jpost.com. Retrieved January 15, 2019.
  43. Kampeas, Ron (January 19, 2019). "Women's March Leader Wouldn't Say in Interview Whether Israel Has Right to Exist". Haaretz. Retrieved January 24, 2019.
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