Women Return to Protest

Leaders of the Women’s March, which attracted millions of protestors after the presidential inauguration in Jan., organized another march to combat the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Department of Justice (DOJ). On July 14, hundreds of protestors gathered at the headquarters of the NRA to protest an advertisement which activists called divisive and aimed against minority and progressive groups. Then, on July 15, activists held a vigil and rally at the DOJ.

On July 14 and 15, protesters stood against the Department of Justice and the National Rifle Association in protest of countless deaths from gun violence. (Insert) Tamika Mallory speaks to marches on July 14. (Photos by Lauryn Hill)

The March included an 18.6 mile trek from the NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Va. to the Department of Justice in D.C.

Tamika Mallory, co-president of the Women’s March, told protesters if the NRA believes no one will fight for human rights, then women will. “Guess who’s going to lead it? We are,” Mallory said during her speech before the group marched to the DOJ.”The women are leading the fight against the bigotry and hypocrisy against the NRA.”

Mallory was joined by other leaders who helped organize the Women’s March including, co-President Bob Bland, Treasurer Carmen Perez, and Assistant Treasurer Linda Sarsour.

Adriana Dominguez marched the entire way. She described how her body was sweating a lot of the water she constantly consumed. Dominguez, 22, said the afternoon storm brought relief from the high temperature for marches.

“ wanted us to take a bus to meet up with some of the other people who went ahead, but we were like no. We are going to march every single mile of this thing,” Dominguez told the AFRO. “And we finished it. We caught up with them.”

The march primarily sparked from the acquittal of former Officer Jeronimo Yanez, the policeman who fatally shot Philando Castile in Minnesota in 2016, and an NRA ad which featured conservative television host Dana Leosch. The ad, which was released on June 29, seemed to address left-wing protestors by showing clips of looters and vandals destroying property during a protest that was unnamed.

Mallory slammed the ad by issuing an open letter to NRA’s CEO, Wayne LaPierre. Mallory called on the NRA to remove the ad and apologize for the “recent irresponsible and dangerous propaganda videos” which she said she sees as “a direct attack on people of color, progressives, and anyone who exercises their First Amendment right to protest.”

Mallory also called on the NRA to defend Philando Castile’s Second Amendment right and to demand that the DOJ indict Yanez for Castile’s murder.

According to media outlets, NRA commentator Grant Stinchfield, personally addressed Mallory in another ad, telling her to “get over it, and grow up.”

Castile’s mother, Valerie Castile, did not attend the rally, but provided a written statement that was read by civil rights lawyer, Nekima Levy-Pounds. The letter expressed her outrage with the NRA’s reluctance to release a formal statement on behalf of Castile’s Second Amendment rights. “I want Black men who have a license to carry, to be treated the same way, that a White man would be treated,” the lawyer read to the crowd on June 14. “The NRA should be ashamed of themselves for waiting a whole damn year to issue a statement about my son . . . my son followed all of the rules.”

Jennifer Adu, 29, who lives in Fairfax, Va., said she believes in her Second Amendment right but knows many people have abused it. “People have used it in the wrong ways and they have taken the right and transformed it for their own agendas to do things that aren’t fair,” she told the AFRO. Adu mentioned that some police are among the people who have abused this right and she said she hoped the NRA would remove the ad from their website.

Other protestors who saw the NRA ad said they were caught off-guard and felt unsafe by the statements spoken by Leosch. Maribel Pizarro, who is from Miami, said she was “taken aback” upon seeing the NRA ad. “I was immediately defensive when I saw the video mainly because it incites a second civil war,” Pizarro told the AFRO. “Without directly calling people out by names, they called out groups, and to me that’s just so much worse, because now you’re not just attacking an individual, you’re attacking a society, a culture, a community.”

Pizarro, 38, was accompanied by Alberta Jean, who was there to show her support for her Black son. “Whenever he goes out the house, it’s a concern,” Jean, 43, told the AFRO. “And I don’t want to have to continue living like this. We shouldn’t be living in America, and be scared that our sons are going to get killed.”

Mallory, who has an 18-year-old son, said she hopes her son and other Black and Brown men and boys “get the message that someone cares.”

“It’s important against all the hate that we see out of the country, the amount of times they see that Black lives don’t matter to many people, that they also see the resistance; that there are people of all views on the other side of the conservation telling them that their lives do matter, that they count, and that we are prepared to put our lives on the line in order for them to live in what we believe is one day going to be the beloved community of this country,” Mallory told reporters.