Billionaire
George Soros has ties to more than 50 partners of the women’s march on
Washington, by Asra Q Nomani, 1/20/17
What
is the link between one of Hillary Clinton’s largest donors and the Women’s
March? Turns out, it’s quite significant
In the pre-dawn darkness of today’s presidential inauguration day,
I faced a choice, as a lifelong liberal feminist who voted for Donald
Trump for president: lace up my pink Nike sneakers to step forward
and take the DC Metro into the nation’s capital for the inauguration of
America’s new president, or wait and go tomorrow to the after-party, dubbed the
“Women’s March on Washington”?
The Guardian has
touted the “Women’s March on Washington” as a “spontaneous” action for women’s
rights. Another liberal media outlet, Vox, talks about the “huge, spontaneous groundswell”
behind the march. On its website, organizers of the march are promoting their
work as “a grassroots effort” with
“independent” organizers. Even my local yoga studio, Beloved Yoga, is renting a
bus and offering seats for $35. The march’s manifesto says magnificently, “The
Rise of the Woman = The Rise of the Nation.”
It’s an idea that I, a liberal feminist, would embrace. But I know
and most of America knows that the organizers of the march haven’t put into
their manifesto: the march really isn’t a “women’s march.” It’s a march for
women who are anti-Trump.
As someone who voted for Trump, I don’t feel welcome, nor do many
other women who reject the liberal identity-politics that is the core
underpinnings of the march, so far, making white women feel
unwelcome, nixing women who oppose
abortion and hijacking the agenda.
To understand the march better, I stayed up through the nights
this week, studying the funding, politics and
talking points of the some 403 groups that are “partners” of
the march. Is this a non-partisan “Women’s March”?
Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist
Association, a march “partner,” told me his organization was “nonpartisan” but
has “many concerns about the incoming Trump administration that include what we
see as a misogynist approach to women.” Nick Fish, national program director of
the American Atheists, another march partner, told me, “This is not a
‘partisan’ event.” Dennis Wiley, pastor of Covenant Baptist United Church of
Christ, another march “partner,” returned my call and said, “This is not a
partisan march.”
Really? UniteWomen.org, another partner, features videos with the
hashtags #ImWithHer, #DemsInPhily and #ThanksObama. Following the money, I
pored through documents of billionaire George Soros and his Open Society
philanthropy, because I wondered: What is the link between one of Hillary
Clinton’s largest donors and the “Women’s March”? I found out: plenty.
By my draft research, which I’m opening up for crowd-sourcing on
GoogleDocs, Soros has funded, or has close relationships with, at least 56 of
the march’s “partners,” including “key partners” Planned Parenthood, which
opposes Trump’s anti-abortion policy, and the National Resource Defense
Council, which opposes Trump’s environmental policies. The other Soros ties
with “Women’s March” organizations include the partisan MoveOn.org (which was
fiercely pro-Clinton), the National Action Network (which has a former
executive director lauded by Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett as “a leader
of tomorrow” as a march co-chair and another official as “the head of
logistics”). Other Soros grantees who are “partners” in the march are the
American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty International
and Human Rights Watch. March organizers and the organizations identified here
haven’t yet returned queries for comment.
On the issues I care about as a Muslim, the “Women’s March,”
unfortunately, has taken a stand on the side of partisan politics that has
obfuscated the issues of Islamic extremism over the eight years of the Obama
administration. “Women’s March” partners include the Council on
American-Islamic Relations, which has not only deflected on issues of Islamic
extremism post-9/11, but opposes Muslim reforms that would allow women to be
prayer leaders and pray in the front of mosques, without wearing headscarves as
symbols of chastity. Partners also include the Southern Poverty Law Center
(SPLC), which wrongly designated Maajid Nawaz, a Muslim reformer, an “anti-Muslim extremist” in
a biased report released before the election. The SPLC confirmed to me that
Soros funded its “anti-Muslim extremists” report targeting Nawaz. (Ironically,
CAIR also opposes abortions, but its leader still has a key speaking role.)
Another Soros grantee and march “partner” is the Arab-American
Association of New York, whose executive director, Linda Sarsour, is a march
co-chair. When I co-wrote a piece, arguing that Muslim women don’t have to wear
headscarves as a symbol of “modesty,” she attacked the coauthor and me as
“fringe.”
Earlier, at least 33 of the 100 “women of color,” who initially
protested the Trump election in street protests, worked at organizations that
receive Soros funding, in part for “black-brown” activism. Of course, Soros is
an “ideological philanthropist,” whose interests align with many of these
groups, but he is also a significant political donor. In Davos, he told
reporters that Trump is a “would-be dictator.”
A spokeswoman for Soros’s Open Society Foundations, said in a
statement, “There have been many false reports about George Soros and the Open
Society Foundations funding protests in the wake of the U.S. presidential
elections. There is no truth to these reports.” She added, “We support a wide
range of organizations — including those that support women and minorities who
have historically been denied equal rights. Many of whom are concerned about
what policy changes may lie ahead. We are proud of their work. We of course
support the right of all Americans to peaceably assemble and petition their
government—a vital, and constitutionally safeguarded, pillar of a functioning
democracy.”
Much like post-election protests, which included a sign, “Kill
Trump,” were not “spontaneous,” as reported by some media outlets,
the “Women’s March” is an extension of strategic identity politics that has so
fractured America today, from campuses to communities. On the left or the
right, it’s wrong. But, with the inauguration, we know the politics. With the
march, “women” have been appropriated for a clearly anti-Trump day. When I
shared my thoughts with her, my yoga studio owner said it was “sad” the march’s
organizers masked their politics. “I want love for everyone,” she said.
The left’s fierce identity politics and its failure on Islamic
extremism lost my vote this past election, and so, as the dawn’s first light
breaks through the darkness of the morning as I write, I make my decision: I’ll
lace up my pink Nikes and head to the inauguration, skipping the “Women’s
March” that doesn’t have a place for women like me.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated to include a statement
from the Open Society Foundations.
Asra Q. Nomani is a former Wall Street Journal reporter.
She can be reached at asra@asranomani.com or on Twitter.
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