Social activist Tamika Mallory says 'being a part of the movement wasn't optional' in her family

— -- Tamika Mallory, a co-chair of the National Women’s March, was born and raised in the social justice movement she now helps to lead.

Her parents were founding members of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network (NAN). Her formative years were spent tagging along to civil rights marches and rallies. Social justice, in some ways, is in her blood.

“[My parents] were always very clear with me that being part of the movement wasn’t optional, because it is us,” she said. “It’s the only path to survival for black people in America, that you be connected to a movement that is larger than yourself.”

Raised in Harlem, New York, with her siblings, Mallory recalls a childhood comprised of school, church and activism. She sang the national anthem at community events organized by her mother and father, passing out fliers with fellow “kids of the movement.”

She educated herself on gentrification, police brutality and criminal justice reform from the periphery, absorbing the messages presented by the adults.

“When I was very young I didn’t necessarily understand nor care. And then when I became a teenager I completely rebelled against it,” Mallory, 36, recalled. “And I didn’t, I don’t want to have anything to do with it. I felt like it was that they were imposing on me, their lives.”

By 17, she was in full rebellion, and fully removed from the causes to which her parents devoted their lives. A year later, Mallory was pregnant. Two years later, after a fatal shooting, she became a single parent.

“My son was born while I was 18, and two years later his father was murdered,” Mallory said. “I decided that [the movement] was actually the place where I was supposed to be, and that there was heavy work that I was responsible for.”

The messaging, the urgency and the mission in which she had been raised suddenly resonated more deeply, she says. Mallory continued in the path her parents had helped to forge, growing into a leadership role at NAN, advocating for stronger gun regulations and advising then-Vice President Biden on his related efforts.

By the time Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, Mallory’s ability to inspire and mobilize communities in need of action was cemented. But when she was approached about helping to lead the effort to organize the historic National Women’s March in response to Trump’s election, she didn’t exactly jump at the chance

Mallory says she was surprised to learn that 53 percent of the white women who voted had cast their ballots for Trump, a man who has been accused of – though he has denied - sexual assault or misconduct by more than a dozen women. That realization, Mallory says, “was very, very painful.”

“I was challenged by why white women would do that,” she said. “And the only reason I could come up with, the only conclusion I could come to, was that racism, and sexism, and homophobia, and transphobia, and Islamophobia; and all of those things are too real. And they are being upheld by everyone, not just white men, but their wives, and mothers and others. And so I had a hard time deciding that that was a space that I should be in.”

Ultimately, Mallory decided that rather than wait for a seat at a table, she should be there to help build it. She joined forces with Bob Bland, Carmen Perez and Linda Sarsour, making history Jan. 21, 2017, as more than a million people rallied in the nation’s capital and around the world on President Trump’s first full day in office.

After the success of what some argue is the largest single-day protest in U.S. history, the women are now refocusing their energy into a new movement, this one aimed at a revolution at the polls in the 2018 midterm elections.

“I believe that our argument is stronger when we can back it up with that vote. And that’s why Power to the Polls is so important,” Mallory said. “It’s why the Women’s March is working so hard to register a million people. We believe we will register even more than that, but definitely a million people across the country. “

Mallory believes a focused effort, channeling the momentum of the Women’s March to register previously disenfranchised voters, could help drive enthusiasm for higher turnout for off-year elections, contests in which participation traditionally drops. She also believes that going forward, any women’s movement will need to keep women of color -- specifically, black women -- at its core and at its helm.

“We carry every struggle on our back. We show up wherever we are supposed to,” Mallory said. “We could be carrying mental abuse, sexual abuse. Gun violence could have happened in our community the night before. We might be homeless. We might be hungry. We may be hurting. But we show up anyway. Because that’s what black women do.”

Mallory was interviewed as part of a series called "Uncomfortable," hosted by Amna Nawaz, which offers in-depth honest conversations with influential figures about issues dividing America.