Washington, D.C. hosted two large political marches last weekend. Both emphasized women’s issues, but the contrast between them couldn’t be more stark.
The first event marked the 46th time peaceful protesters have asked politicians to defend the most fundamental right, the right to life, for the hundreds of thousands of babies who are aborted in America each year.
The other was the “Women’s March,” a two-year-old amalgamation of radical leftists that was founded to protest Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election.
One event has been a media darling from its very inception, enjoying fawning coverage of even its most mundane activities, as well as triumphant proclamations that it represents a “turning point in American politics.” The other, despite drawing hundreds of thousands of attendees every year, often in freezing cold temperatures, has largely been ignored or even dismissed by the mainstream media.
You can probably guess which one is which.
That’s right, the Women’s March is the one that gets showered with adulation in the press, while the March for Life apparently doesn’t have the “right kind” of women to warrant such slavish media attention.
This year was shaping up to be no different, with major networks preparing to roll out the red carpet and treat the Women’s March to a glut of free nationwide publicity. In the days and weeks leading up to the Women’s March, however, that plan was called into question.
Just before Christmas, Tablet magazine dropped a bombshell report detailing the rampant anti-Semitism of three of the four original co-chairs of the Women’s March: Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour, and Cameron Perez. Those are the same three women Glamour named “Women of the Year,” Fortune listed among the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders,” and Time put on its Top 100 list.
Now, though, the Women’s March is mired in controversy, and several of the movement’s “partners,” including the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), ended their affiliations with the group.
It’s unclear exactly what the final straw was, because previous allegations of anti-Semitism on the part of Women’s March organizers have done little to curb media enthusiasm for the movement.
For example, Mallory’s close, years-long relationship with Louis Farrakhan, a wildly anti-Semitic black nationalist leader whose Nation of Islam group teaches that white people are artificial subhumans “grafted” to be evil oppressors by a mad scientist named Yakoob, evidently wasn’t enough to discredit the Women’s March in the eyes of the media.
Big name liberals in politics and media also didn’t seem to mind when it became clear that Sarsour had used the Nation of Islam’s “Fruit of Islam” paramilitary group as private security. Nor did they object when Sarsour used the Women’s March platform to call President Trump a “fascist,” declare that America is “a country that was founded on the extermination of indigenous people,” and assert that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is unqualified to negotiate on immigration reform because he is white.
Apart from a few Jewish outlets, the wider media establishment didn’t even raise much of a fuss after Tablet revealed that Perez and Mallory accused Jews of being leaders of the American slave trade during the very first meeting to organize what would later become the Women’s March, in 2016.
In fact, ABC gave Mallory the chance to come on one of the most popular daytime TV shows in America, The View, to present her perspective just days before the Women’s March. It was only after Mallory repeatedly refused to condemn Louis Farrakhan on national television that groups like the DNC, the SPLC, and EMILY’s List finally decided to withdraw their support for the Women’s March.
Fortunately, there was an alternative to the Women’s March that didn’t require participants to hobnob with anti-Semites, and it was called the March for Life.
Unlike many in the anti-Trump “resistance” movement, pro-lifers respect free speech and open political discourse. That’s why you can count on the March for Life to take place next year, and every year, long after the Women’s March fades into an uncomfortable memory.
Martha Boneta is a native Washingtonian, Policy Advisor and a nationally recognized farmer on her family farm, Liberty Farm
