https://www.essence.com/news/tamika-mallory-double-standard-response-shootings

Women’s March co-chair Tamika Mallory voiced her frustration with the national response towards the Florida school shooting as compared to the shootings we see taking place in urban neighborhoods.

Mallory was a guest on The View alongside #MeToo founder Tarana Burke and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors to talk with host Sunny Hostin about the impact of their movements. And she said that her frustration is based on how certain voices and stories are being erased to accommodate this new gun violence prevention movement. 

“I was so frustrated over the last few days watching this storyline come out…” she told Hostin.

“Seventeen people…mostly children..white children are shot and killed in a school in Florida, and somehow that erases the 17 children shot on the corners of Chicago,” she continued. “That’s a problem when we are not doing the intersectional work to be able to have both conversations at once.”

She made it clear that she fully supported the young people behind the call for stricter gun laws. But she says the erasure of one group for another was a dangerous line of thinking because it also affects how movements are funded. 

Mallory also pointed out that the bigger organizations that are now getting involved in these movements, often steal the hard work already done by grassroots organizations on the ground.

“It has been mom and pop organizations on street corners that are on the ground that are doing the real work,” she said. “And we as people of good moral conscious need to pay attention to where we put our resources and our time.”

Watch the full interview here.