The organizers of January's Women's March are back with a message for the National Rifle Association. On July 14 and 15, protestors will march from the NRA headquarters to the DOJ.
After the National Rifle Association released a controversial video ad and failed to address the murder of Philando Castile, the women behind the Women's March took to action once again. On July 14 and 15, the women will march once again -- this time from the NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, to the Department of Justice in D.C. The Facebook event for the march says the following:We will gather Friday at 9 a.m. in front of the NRA Headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia. The rally begins promptly at 10 a.m. The 17-mile march from the NRA to the Department of Justice will begin promptly at 12 p.m. People will stay overnight in the D.C. area. We will gather at the Department of Justice on Saturday at 10 a.m."The event has a staggering 6,400 "interested" individuals and more than 900 individuals marked as "going."
The reasons behind the march
Numerous factors sparked this call to action, yet at the crux of them all is the National Rifle Association. The Women's March writes on their Facebook event page:Recent actions of the NRA demonstrate not only a disregard for the lives of black and brown people in America, but appear to be a direct endorsement of violence against women, our families, and our communities for exercising our constitutional right to protest."One of the motivations of the march is not something the NRA did, but rather, something the association failed to do. Since the 2016 murder of licensed gun owner Philando Castile, and now after the acquittal of the murdering Officer Jeronimo Yanez, the NRA has remained silent. The Women's March writes, "The NRA claims to stand for the 2nd Amendment rights of all Americans, but their silence on Mr. Castile's constitutional right to own a gun betrayed a deep hypocrisy that many joined in calling out." [caption id="attachment_2910" align="aligncenter" width="960"]
The extent of the NRA's comments on Castile's murder, posted July 2016 in the week following the murder.[/caption]
Another motivation for the march is a controversial video ad featuring conservative talk show host Dana Loesch. In the one-minute video released in June, Loesch, with a serious scowl, delivers a monologue that relies heavily on the use of an unspecified "they" pronoun:
They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again."The pronoun-dependent propagandist speech is punctuated by choice scenes from protests across the country. The message would, of course, not be complete without some assignment of blame on Barack Obama: "They use their ex-president to endorse the resistance."
The video culminates in Loesch's breathy condemnation of protestors: "All to make them march. Make them protest. Make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia, to smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law abiding."
Upon conclusion, Loesch wraps ups with her own call to action, which many believe is a thinly veiled promotion of violence against protestors. Loesch says, "The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with a clenched fist of truth."
The us-versus-them rhetoric is inarguably divisive and prompted the Women's March to state the following:
...a vicious and incendiary NRA advertisement came to light, in which an alt-right propagandist appears to call for armed conflict against our communities, demonizing people of color, progressives and any of us who exercise our First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and exercise our free speech in protest. In response, Women’s March co-president Tamika Mallory penned an open letter to the NRA asking them to remove and apologize for the ad, which was decried by many card-carrying NRA members and some Republican legislators as well."Tamika Mallory's letter to the NRA included a short list of demands. Read the full letter below.
The letter was met with a disturbing and even more divisive video response in which the speaker refers to Tamika Mallory by name and continues to lump together all non-conservatives into the "them" group, which he refers to as "the violent left."
The video provided further motivation for Friday's marchers, prompting the following response from the Women's March:
Instead of backing away from the vitriol of the ad, the NRA responded by releasing a new video attacking Tamika and other leaders personally and extending the false narrative that our movement is a violent threat to public safety. This is the kind of inflammatory speech that leads to acts of hate and violence. It puts Tamika, a mother whose family has been impacted by gun violence, under increased threat as it does others named, and it is unequivocally meant to create a chilling effect on our communities speaking up and using the power of our collective voice."What do you think? We'd love to hear your opinion in the comments below!
