One who has unjustly escaped opprobrium

Sar Shalom

The expose in Tablet has had an "the emperor has no clothes" effect on inducing people around the country to recognize the judeophobia at the core of the Women's March leadership. As a result, many chapters of the Women's March, and outside feminists, have strongly complained about the animus that Linda Sarsauron Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, and Carmen Perez have demonstrated towards Jews. The leaders of the Women's March deserve all of the vitriol they have received since the Tablet piece was published. However, while the Tablet expose did result in increased scrutiny of Sarsour, Mallory, and Perez, there is one figure covered in that piece who has not received much attention since then, neither from various feminist groups nor in the anti-anti-semitism blogosphere. I refer to Michael Skolnik, as described early in the Tablet expose.

Soon after [conceiving of the female-centered march], [Vanessa] Wruble—a Washington, D.C., native who founded OkayAfrica, a digital media platform dedicated to new African music, culture, and politics, with The Roots’ Questlove—reached out to a man she knew named Michael Skolnik. The subject of a New York Times profile the previous year as an “influencer” at the nexus of social activism and celebrity, Skolnik held a powerful though not easily defined role in the world of high-profile activist politics. “It’s very rare to have one person who everyone respects in entertainment, or in politics, or among the grass roots,” said Van Jones, in a 2015 New York Times piece. “But to have one person who’s respected by all three? There isn’t anyone but Michael Skolnik.”

When Wruble relayed her concern that the nascent women’s movement had to substantively include women of color, Skolnik told her he had just the women for her to meet: Carmen Perez and Tamika Mallory. These were recommendations Skolnik could vouch for personally. In effect, he was connecting Wruble to the leadership committee of his own nonprofit—a group called The Gathering for Justice, where he and Mallory sat on the board of directors, and Perez served as the executive director.

The expose goes on to show how Sarsour was subsequently brought in to the leadership of the Women's March through Skolnik's Gathering for Justice. What this part of the expose shows is that the Jew-baiters now leading the Women's March did not found the movement, nor did they organically rise from a group that did. Rather, a separate group of women founded the movement and sought counsel from Skolnik to include women of color, and they blindly trusted Skolnik to elevate the Jew-baiters to their current position in order to include women of color.

The question is, if Skolnik had built such deep connections with so many Jew-baiters, how did he become the one person who is trusted in politics, entertainment, and grass roots? Further, it shows how thoroughly infused the social justice movement is with the notion that injustice to Jews is the only tolerable social injustice. It really doesn't matter whether Skolnik shares the judeophobia of his proteges or if he just turned a blind eye to it. What matters is that he, and the social justice movement he occupies a position in, be held to account for empowering such figures. This means that anyone seeking to advance any cause must be forewarned that if they do not want to become associated with judeophobia like that in the Women's March, then they must not trust Skolnik, barring serious measures to clean house.