But on Monday, this apology tour hit a snag when Mallory appeared on the daytime talk show “The View” and refused to denounce the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, whom she once called “the GOAT,” or Greatest Of All Time. Last February, Mallory attended a Farrakhan rally where he railed against “satanic” Jews. During his speech, he gave a shout-out to Mallory and the Women’s March, and afterward, she posted positively about the event on social media. On “The View,” rather than disavowing Farrakhan, Mallory said only, “I don’t agree with many of Minister Farrakhan’s statements.”

Following that interview, the Democratic National Committee, which had been listed as a partner of the 2019 march, appeared to pull out. Several groups that have sponsored the march in the past, including Naral and the Southern Poverty Law Center, are also gone from its public list of backers. Local marches around the country have emphasized their independence from the national group. New York City will have two competing rallies.

Writers I admire have argued that there are good reasons that some black activists hesitate to disavow Farrakhan. Last March, the journalist Adam Serwer wrote in The Atlantic of the successful violence-prevention work that the Nation of Islam has done in impoverished black communities. Mallory told him how Nation of Islam women supported her when her son’s father was murdered in 2001. Serwer described a sense in some black communities that the Nation “is present for black people in America’s most deprived and segregated enclaves when the state itself is not present, to say nothing of those who demand its condemnation.”

Yet even if you’re willing to accept rationalizations for associating with an anti-Semite, the point of organizing is to build political power, and in that respect the leaders of the Women’s March have fallen short. They were put at the helm of a popular mass movement, and under their leadership it has alienated many supporters and become significantly more marginal.

The idea for a women’s march on Washington was born in viral Facebook posts that Bob Bland, one of the current co-chairwomen, and Teresa Shook, a retired lawyer in Hawaii, put up after the 2016 election. On social media, tens of thousands of women committed to travel to Washington before any logistical arrangements had been made. Some of the women making initial preparations realized it would be a disaster if the march seemed to be entirely by and for white women. So, at the suggestion of a celebrity-connected activist named Michael Skolnik, Mallory and Perez, both affiliated with Skolnik’s nonprofit, the Gathering for Justice, were recruited to help lead it. They, in turn, brought in Sarsour.