That’s what might be in store on Saturday when the fourth annual Women’s March takes place in Washington, D.C.. The Washington Post says that only about 4,500 women have indicated on Facebook that they will attend. The organizers say they expect 10,000 participants.
It wasn’t always like this. The day after President Trump’s inauguration, hundreds of thousands marched in protest in Washington (an event I covered for Power Line).
Taking into account the thousands of marches nationwide, the Post claims that this was the largest single-day protest in American history. It calls the Women’s March organization “the beating heart of the anti-Trump movement.”
Why, four years later, does the organization barely have a pulse? The Post suggests “burnout,” but that seems more like a label than a genuine explanation.
Perhaps outrage at Trump has diminished in spite of non-stop efforts by the Post and other media outlets to gin it up. Certainly, the dire warnings that fueled the January 2017 protests, and induced so many women to wear pussy hats (the Post discreetly refers to them as pink hats in its article), haven’t come to pass.
Women are as free today as they were three years ago. And they are doing better economically, both in absolute terms and in comparison to men.
This doesn’t mean that the women who marched in 2017 are going to vote for Trump, but it may mean they lack incentive to waste a day converging in downtown D.C.
But there’s more to the demise of the march. The organization behind it has been plagued by “national controversies, financial mismanagement, accusations of anti-Semitism, and a reputation for being unwilling to play nice with others.” That diagnosis is from the Washington Post. Oh dear!
The matter of anti-Semitism surely is playing a significant role, given the number of Jewish women who participated in the original march. The Post confirms this:
Jewish women, in particular, fled the organization en masse after its former co-chairs were accused of making anti-Semitic remarks and aligning themselves with the Nation of Islam and its longtime leader, Louis Farrakhan.
Calls for board members to resign were met with little response. Guila Franklin Siegel, associate director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, said the inaction was disrespectful to Jewish women who were concerned about the direction of the group.
“Disrespect” seems like the least of the problem. A Jew would have to be truly self-hating to want anything to do with an outfit whose then-leaders (Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, and Bob Bland) made anti-Semitic remarks and/or aligned themselves with Louis Farrakhan.
Leaders of this year’s event say they are planning “small-scale events” in the days leading up to the march. It looks like the march itself will be a small-scale event.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.