Tamika Mallory

Tamika D. Mallory
Tamika D. Mallory and Bob Bland at the Tax March 2017
Born Tamika Danielle Mallory
(1980-09-04) September 4, 1980[1]
New York City, U.S.[1]
Occupation Activist
Years active 2002–present
Known for Founder, Mallory Consulting
National chair for the Women's March

Tamika Danielle Mallory (born September 4, 1980[1]) is an activist and the national co-chair for the Women's March. She is an advocate of gun control, feminism, and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Personal life

Mallory was born in The Bronx, New York,[1] to activists Stanley and Voncile Mallory[2] 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.[3] Her parents were founding members of Al Sharpton's National Action Network (NAN), a leading civil rights organization throughout the United States.[4] Their work in NAN influenced Mallory and her interests in social justice and civil rights.

Mallory is a single mother to her son Tarique. Her son's father, Jason Ryans, was murdered in 2001.[3] Mallory explains that her experience with NAN taught her to react to this tragedy with activism. Her son is now 18, and an active member of NAN. Mallory is Christian.[5]

Political activism and career

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 staff member at NAN. Mallory went on to become the youngest Executive Director at NAN. After working at NAN for 14 years,[4] Mallory stepped down from her position as executive director in 2013 to follow her own activism goals. Mallory explains that she still takes part in NAN's work, by attending rallies and recruiting members.

Following her time at NAN, Mallory continued as an activist working on topics such as gun control, women's rights, and police violence. Following the murder of her son's father, she has worked to create stronger gun restriction laws. Mallory worked closely with the Obama administration on gun control legislation, advising Joe Biden and working to pass new legislation.

In 2014, Mallory was selected to serve on the transition committee of the New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. During that time, she helped create the NYC Crisis Management System, an official gun violence prevention program which awards $20 million annually to gun violence prevention organizations.[6] She also served as the co-chair for a new initiative through the Crisis Management System, Gun Violence Awareness Month.[7]

Mallory is the president of her own firm, Mallory Consulting, a strategic planning and event management firm in New York City. She is currently 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.[8]

Women's March

Mallory, alongside Bob Bland, Carmen Perez, and Linda Sarsour, organized the 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.[9] The Women's March website said that total worldwide participation was nearly five million.[10] According to British newspaper The Independent the march may have been the largest single-day protest in U.S. history.[11]

Organization and planning

The Women's March idea formed after the election of Donald J. Trump. 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 individuals interested was a catalyst for the organizing that led to the 2017 Women's March.

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

Mallory has said that while the march was in direct response to Trump's election, the focus of the march was more about addressing social issues in the United States.[12] The march gave women, minorities, people of color, LGBTQIA, and others a space to actively 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".[13]

Mallory's work within the Women's March was geared toward creating space for unrepresented voices in social activism. It was her feeling 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.[14]

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".[15]

Post-march 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.[16] 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.[17] 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.[18] 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.[19]

Criticism and Controversy

Mallory has been criticized for her support of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and Assata Shakur, a former Black Liberation Army member convicted of murder.[20][21][22]

On February 25, 2018, Mallory attended a speech led by Farrakhan, where she was directly acknowledged by him.[23] During his three-hour speech, Farrakhan claimed that "the powerful Jews are my enemy", that "the Jews have control of those agencies of government" like the FBI, that Jews are "the mother and father of apartheid", and that Jews are responsible for "degenerate behavior in Hollywood turning men into women and women into men".[24] Mallory posted an image to Instagram of Farrakhan and herself, captioned “Thank God this man is still alive and doing well. He is definitely the GOAT. Happy Birthday @louisfarrakhan!”[25] In a different Instagram post, she said “The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan just stepped to the mic,” and that she is “super ready for [his] message.”[26] Farrakhan has called Hitler “a great man,”[27][28] and was described in The New York Times as “A religious fundamentalist whose group has been condemned by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Mr. Farrakhan is fervently opposed to the legitimacy of the state of Israel, and his political positions regarding the country frequently spill over into bigoted remarks about Jews.”[29]

On April 17, 2018, Mallory criticized Starbucks for allowing the ADL, an organization dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism, to participate in a company-wide racial bias training after the arrest of two black men at a Starbucks in Philadelphia, claiming, without evidence, that the "ADL attacks black and brown people".[30]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Birth reference results for Tamika Danielle Mallory". FamilySearch.org. Retrieved March 27, 2018.
  2. ↑ "Tamika Mallory: Young and powerful new executive director of NAN". Retrieved 2017-07-06.
  3. 1 2 Barker, Cryil (October 24, 2013). "Tamika Mallory: The Beauty of Activism". Amsterdam News. Retrieved April 21, 2017.
  4. 1 2 Keck, Catie (January 20, 2017). "Meet Tamika Mallory, the Lifelong Activist Who Organized the Women's March on Washington". Complex. Retrieved January 22, 2017.
  5. ↑ Serwer, Adam. "Why Tamika Mallory Won't Condemn Farrakhan". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2018-03-13.
  6. ↑ "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.
  7. ↑ 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.
  8. ↑ "The Gathering for Justice". Gathering for Justice. Retrieved April 21, 2017.
  9. ↑ 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.
  10. ↑ "Sister Marches". Women's March on Washington.
  11. ↑ 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.
  12. ↑ Wilson, Wendy L. (January 23, 2017). "Activist Tamika Mallory Speaks With EBONY on Women's March". Ebony. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  13. ↑ Wilson, Wendy L (January 23, 2017). "Activist Tamika Mallory Speaks With EBONY on Women's March". Ebony. Retrieved March 10, 2017.
  14. ↑ 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.
  15. ↑ 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.
  16. ↑ Shamus, Kristen (January 22, 2017). "Women's March launches 10 actions for first 100 days". Detroit Free Press. USA Today. Retrieved April 24, 2017.
  17. ↑ "Action One – Postcards". Women's March on Washington. Retrieved April 24, 2017.
  18. ↑ "Action 2 – Huddle". Women's March on Washington. Retrieved April 24, 2017.
  19. ↑ "Action 3 – Hear Our Voice". Women's March on Washington. Retrieved April 24, 2017.
  20. ↑ Weiss, Bari (August 1, 2017). "When Progressives Embrace Hate". The New York Times.
  21. ↑ "The feminist Farrakhan fans who organized the Women's March". The Times of Israel.
  22. ↑ "Supporter of homophobic, anti-Semitic U.S. religious leader to speak at NDP convention".
  23. ↑ "Farrakhan Rails Against Jews, Israel, and the U.S. Government in Wide-Ranging Saviours' Day Speech". Anti-Defamation League.
  24. ↑ "Women's March Co-President Attends Louis Farrakhan Rally – Again". The Forward. Retrieved 2018-04-18.
  25. ↑ "Tamika D. Mallory on Instagram: "Thank God this man is still alive and doing well. He is definitely the GOAT. Happy Birthday @louisfarrakhan! 🖤✊🏾"". Instagram. Retrieved 2018-07-03.
  26. ↑ "Tamika D. Mallory on Instagram: "The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan just stepped to the mic for #SD16DET... I'm super ready for this message! #JUSTICEORELSE…"". Instagram. Retrieved 2018-07-03.
  27. ↑ AP. "Farrakhan Again Describes Hitler as a 'Very Great Man'". Retrieved 2018-07-03.
  28. ↑ "Why Louis Farrakhan Is Back in the News". Retrieved 2018-07-03.
  29. ↑ "Why Louis Farrakhan Is Back in the News". Retrieved 2018-07-03.
  30. ↑ "Women's March Leaders Slam Starbucks For Tapping ADL To Defuse Racism Furor". The Forward.
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