Anchorage women sit this march out

By
Suzanne Downing
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3

(3-minute read) JUNEAU MARCHES SAME DAY AS NATIONAL ORGANIZATION ACCUSED OF ANTI-SEMITISM

Although about 650 women participated in the Women’s March in Juneau on Saturday, Anchorage women didn’t sally forth this year.

Not yet, anyway. Not with the National Women’s March under so much condemnation.

Last year, 3,000 women gathered on the Delaney Park Strip in Anchorage for the second Women’s March, an event launched in 2017 to protest President Donald Trump and his ilk.

The protestors, back then wearing “pink pussy hats” decried the racism and bigotry that they blame Trump for bringing to the country.

This year, it’s the national Women’s March organization itself that is being accused of racism and bigotry. And the seething rage at Donald Trump just wasn’t enough to get people out on a bluebird winter day in Anchorage. Where they did rally around the country, few pink hats were to be seen. That was so 2017.

NATIONAL GROUP UNDER FIRE

The national umbrella organization Women’s March leadership is accused of harboring anti-semitic views, and particularly for not decisively denouncing Louis Farrakhan, who has lobbed unmistakably bigoted, racist remarks.

Farrakhan is the leader of the black nationalist hate group Nation of Islam, and is has a long record of hate language against Jews.
He’s also had a welcome mat put out for him by members of the Congressional Black Caucus and even with President Barack Obama.
During a February, 2018 speech in Chicago, Farrakhan said, “the powerful Jews are my enemy.”
He also said, “White folks are going down. And Satan is going down. And Farrakhan, by God’s grace, has pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew and I’m here to say your time is up, your world is through.”
He later said, “Let me tell you something, when you want something in this world, the Jew holds the door.”
DOUBLE STANDARD?

Juneau women were possibly not concerned about the national organization’s co-chair Tamika Mallory, who attended the remarks by Farrakhan last year and wrote on Twitter, “The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan just stepped to the mic for #SD16DET… I’m super ready for this message! #JUSTICEORELSE #ForTheLoveOfFlint.”

Just this fall, Juneau Democrats ran a campaign of personal destruction against Juneau Republican women for what Democrats said was an anti-semitic flyer against Senate candidate and Democrat Jesse Kiehl.

The flyer said, “If you give him your vote, you may as well give him your wallet,” a clear indication that he is a tax-and-spend liberal.

But that’s not how the Left spun it, and they frothed the issue until it became a top story at KTOO, accusing Republican women of anti-semitism.

Kiehl is Jewish. He never denounced the effort to smear the Republican women, which culminated in one of the women being accosted at a local grocery story, and being called a “racist bitch” by an aggressive and threatening Juneau Democrat.

Even then-Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott’s chief of staff Claire Richardson got in on the action, and blaming on Facebook a post denouncing the women and demanding an apology.

But that was then.

At Saturday’s Juneau march, Kiehl was in attendance for the march, as were Democrat Reps. Sara Hannan and spite of the fact that the Democratic National Committee and even Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz have withdrawn support for the Women’s March as an organization.

Re. Grier Hopkins also attended the Juneau march, but unlike last year, former Rep. Justin Parish, a Juneauite, stayed away. He did not run for his office after getting accused of harassment. Other representatives in the past who attended the Women’s March in 2017 were deposed Rep. Dean Westlake and Rep. Zach Fansler.

Marches also took place in Homer, Ketchikan, Sitka, Fairbanks, and Nome. In all, it appears that about 1,000 women in Alaska participated this year, a precipitous drop from participation in past years.

The Juneau march, as did some others around the West, focused on missing indigenous women, which critics say is a new cause du jour that has emerged over the past year in Alaska, replacing once “crisis” issues like Trump, and sexual assault on women as an injustice to rally around.

Across the nation, the turnout was modest compared to the past two years. In Seattle, where it was dubbed the Womxn’s  March (putting an x over men), some 10,000 attended, compared with 100,000 in the march’s first year.

3 COMMENTS

  2. I am glad to see that you are covering this “assembly” as it is allowed by our 1st and 14th Ammendments to our U.S. Constitution.
    It is alarming how many “movements” or comments are attacked as “anti Semitic” these days.
    Most Americans do not understand the difference B/W “anti Semitism” and “anti Zionism” or claim any criticism of a Jewish person is anti-semitic.
    A current example is the growing BDS movement against Israeli occupation in the disputed Palestinian territory.
    As Congress gets it’s first Palestinian member and others join her side, we will see further criticism on U.S. policy towards Gaza and U.S. arms sales with Israel…
    Neither of which are “Anti-Semitic”, yet will face “false attacks” from those on the “right” and “left” in office and in media.
    Knowledge is Power.

  3. After last year’s march, the Daily News-Mindless made Liz Lyke the subject of their regular Monday front-page personality profile. I mention this because this particular story made mention of her transgender status, something that was mysteriously absent from any coverage of her successful borough assembly campaign later in the year. As for “honorable minister” Farrakhan, there’s a Chick tract out there which contains a caricature of Farrakhan saying “Jesus was a revolutionary and a black man”. Funny that I would come across that at the same time that there’s a pair of black men preaching a similar message in front of City Hall every week.

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