The Women’s March — a civil-rights group at the center of protests against the Trump presidency — is losing top staffers and supporters over its leadership’s refusal to denounce a racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic rant by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
The latest to jump ship is high-profile staffer Alyssa Klein, who quit last week as the group’s social-media director.
Klein called Farrakhan “a dangerous troll,” and tweeted on March 5 that Women’s March leaders are “turning a blind eye to the hate spoken about a group of people.”
Regional branches in Canada, Florida and Washington, DC, have condemned the leadership’s unwillingness to speak out against Farrakhan.
And Planned Parenthood, the movement’s most prominent sponsor, dumped Women’s March Co-president Tamika Mallory as a keynote speaker at a luncheon next month.
The controversy erupted over a Farrakhan speech in Chicago Feb. 25 in which he called Jews “Satanic,” claimed they run the governments of the US and Mexico and are pursuing a “pot plot” to spread marijuana use among black men in a scheme to feminize them.
Farrakhan gave a shout-out to Mallory, who was in the audience for the three-hour rant and later posted photos from the event.
Mallory responded to anger over the speech by saying that she affirmed the “validity” of the feelings of those who were offended, and that she didn’t expect her presence at the speech “to lead anyone to question my beliefs.”
Carmen Perez, another Women’s March leader, is a Farrakhan fan who has apologized for him by saying, “There are no perfect leaders.”
And Linda Sarsour, a controversial Palestinian nationalist and Women’s March organizer, spoke at a Nation of Islam event in 2015.
Mallory, Perez and Sarsour are backed by Women’s March board member and fashion designer Bob Bland, who tweeted in defense of Mallory that “being held directly accountable for the words of any man is misogynistic.”
That top leadership of the Women’s March won’t decry Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia enrages many of the group’s supporters.
“If . . . these Women’s March leaders are attending his sermons and cheering him on, they should be called out and removed from their roles immediately,” Brooklyn activist Tali Goldsheft told The Post.
Goldsheft is behind a Change.org petition that calls on Women’s March sponsors to cut ties to “hate” and seeks a purge of the movement’s leadership.
“You feel stabbed in the back. It feels like someone you trust just punched you in the gut . . . I’m really wounded,” said former Women’s March supporter Nisi Jacobs, 49, a Manhattan resident.
Jacobs, who helped draft the Change.org petition to depose Mallory and the rest of the Women’s March leadership, has launched an alternative group, Women’s March For All.
“I’d had enough,” Jacobs said.