The third annual Charleston Women’s March, a walk across the Ravenel Bridge, is being organized by students from the Feminist Club at Wando High School in Mt. Pleasant.
The demonstration will begin at Memorial Waterfront Park, on the Mt. Pleasant side of the bridge, at 10 a.m. on Saturday.
It will celebrate the record number of women in the 116th Congress. A hundred and two women are currently serving in the 435-member House of Representatives, while a record 25 women hold seats in the 100-member Senate, according to the Pew Research Center.
“So it’s more of a celebratory march to encourage more women to go into politics and not be afraid to speak about politics,” said Nicolle Young, a 17-year-old senior at Wando High and one of the two main organizers.
While they share a similar theme, the local march is not affiliated with the Women’s March in Washington, D.C. The national march, which takes place Saturday at the National Mall, is honoring the women who ran for office in 2018 with the hasthag #WomensWave.
The 2017 Women’s March on Washington drew three times as many people as President Donald Trump’s inauguration the day before, according to crowd counting experts who spoke to The New York Times, and it inspired countless of sister marches throughout the globe. Since then, organizers have come under scrutiny for anti-Jewish sentiment, with 2019 march co-president Tamika Mallory continuing to defend her relationship with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has been labeled an anti-Semite by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“We’re trying to keep this super inclusive no matter what their background is, and we’re using this platform against all hate,” said Charleston organizer Kaitlin Browne, also a 17-year-old senior at Wando High.
Tamika “Mika” Gadsden, a local activist who organized last year’s Women’s March in Brittlebank Park, told the City Paper that she’s not involved in this year’s effort. Gadsden says that the 2018 event, promoted as an accessible and inclusive “Rally for Electoral Justice,” resulted in insults and threats from local white activists.
“Kat Morgan taking to the stage — who I would never have on my stage, a woman who cannot get over her own privilege,” Gadsden. “She just used her privilege to hop on the stage.”
After another group of women took to the stage without an invitation, Gadsden says she cut the microphone off.
“Merrill Chapman called me a thug and a bully and had to be physically restrained from me and other volunteers,” she added. “I had to stop banging my head against the wall and start working unapologetically with black folks exclusively. That’s not to say I haven’t had tremendous partners of all backgrounds.”
Morgan declined to comment for this article. Chapman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Young and Brown, the organizers of Saturday’s march, say they’re working closely with members of various backgrounds from their school club.
“We’re not about white feminism and the trending woke feminist views the are going around now,” said Young, whose mother immigrated to the United States from Colombia.
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