Amy Smith traveled to Washington, D.C., for the first Women’s March in January 2017, calling the experience transformative.

She was so moved that she participated the following year in Chicago’s Grant Park and then volunteered at another local march in October designed to spur midterm election voting.

Yet as the next anniversary approaches Saturday, Smith — who is Jewish and lives in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood — doesn’t know if she’ll even take part, given mounting accusations of anti-Semitism against leaders of the national organization Women’s March Inc.

“It’s a really confusing issue, because I’m strongly opposed to Donald Trump and I want to do everything I can to repudiate his message and policy,” Smith said. “But I can’t march with a body that doesn’t accept who I am or doesn’t value who I am.”

Amid controversy and splintering within the larger movement, many Chicago-area women are grappling with a difficult choice this weekend: to march or not to march?

Instead of one main march downtown Saturday, like in previous years, various activists and organizations are planning dozens of local anniversary events scattered across the region, some in alignment with national Women’s March leaders, others working hard to separate and distinguish themselves.

The local shift comes as the national group is embroiled in allegations of anti-Semitic rhetoric as well as ties to Louis Farrakhan, whose Chicago-based Nation of Islam has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In a February address at the Wintrust Arena in Chicago, Farrakhan praised Women’s March Inc. co-President Tamika Mallory, who was present, and in the same remarks he declared “the powerful Jews are my enemy.” Mallory has also supported Farrakhan on social media.

This week on ABC’s talk show “The View,” conservative co-host Meghan McCain grilled Mallory and co-President Bob Bland on these connections.

“As I said, I don’t agree with many of Minister Farrakhan’s statements,” Mallory said.

“Do you condemn them?” McCain asked.

“I don’t agree with these statements, at the end of the day …” Mallory said.

“You won’t condemn it,” McCain said, shaking her head.

“To be clear, it’s not my language. It’s not the way that I speak, it’s not the way that I organize,” Mallory responded, adding that her track record as an activist shouldn’t be “judged through the lens of a man.”

In a written statement to the Tribune last month, Women’s March Inc. said the group and its leaders “have dedicated themselves to liberating women from all forms of oppression, including anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism, white supremacy, xenophobia and Islamophobia.”

Rabbi Debra Newman Kamin of Am Yisrael Conservative Congregation in Northfield said she hopes Women’s March Inc.’s leadership will be pressured to step down, not just by Jewish women but by all women.

“We can’t ally ourselves with people who are anti-Semitic,” said Newman Kamin, who is also president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative rabbis. “So it’s so painful to say don’t walk with people who we’re probably allies with on every single other issue. But at what point does the Jewish community say we can’t be treated like this?”

Despite these tensions, some local activists have pledged to march or rally in solidarity with national leaders this weekend. On social media, the group Women’s March Illinois has been coordinating buses for local people who intend to march in Washington, D.C.

Last week, a college student activist announced plans for the “Young Women’s March Rally 2019” at Federal Plaza on Saturday, claiming affiliation with Women’s March Inc.

“In all honesty, I wish people would move on from the old controversy and focus on the positivity Women’s March has brought,” said Jazmine-Marie Cruz, a 19-year-old Roosevelt University student who is organizing the rally.

“Women’s March started a movement and empowerment that had never been done before. … We embrace the Women’s March to show that unity is not uniformity. We are excited to show the country that we are all different here in Chicago but we have to keep working together and not throw away people in the trash that we don’t 100 percent agree with,” she said.

Tamar Manasseh, a rabbinical student who is African-American, said she hopes the movement “maintains its focus.”

“We’re not going to all agree on everything, but if we all agree on women’s rights, that’s the main thing,” said Manasseh, who also founded the Chicago anti-violence group Mothers and Men Against Senseless Killings. “Keep the main thing the main thing. We can’t afford to get caught up in divisiveness.”

Jewish Women of Color , a coalition of members across the U.S. and Canada, last week issued an open letter supporting “the unity principles of the Women’s March.”

“Whenever anti-Semitism is used as a wedge to create divisions between Jews and other marginalized groups, Jews staying at the table is an act of resistance,” said Shahanna McKinney-Baldon, one of the leaders of the coalition, who plans to attend the national march in Washington, D.C., this weekend. “In this situation, for Jewish Women of Color, who live in the intersections among racism, anti-Semitism and sexism, it is imperative that we not only stay at the table, but put ourselves at the center.”

Tammy Vigil, associate professor of communication studies at Boston University, said the history of women’s efforts for political empowerment is “riddled with fissures and missteps and controversial connections,” including accusations of racism, anti-Semitism and classism.

She cautioned that leaders of any movement should be careful about how they accomplish their goals and who they associate with, though “it is impossible to please everyone when you are trying to disrupt the system in order to expand access to power.”

“Yet,” Vigil added, “the fact that local groups are still organizing marches despite the controversy illustrates how important people believe the larger ideals of the movement are.”

Women’s March Chicago recently announced it wouldn’t be hosting its annual march and rally in January, citing limited costs and volunteer resources so soon after a similar event in October. The previous two Januarys, the march drew crowds of hundreds of thousands, shutting down parts of the Loop.

Supporters were instead urged to plan their own community-based marches, political actions or service projects, an initiative dubbed “Operation Activation.” While organizers say this decision was independent of any national cleavages, they have called the opportunity to further distance themselves from Women’s March Inc. a “side benefit.”

Women’s March Chicago in November posted on its Facebook page that the local group “continues to receive inquiries as to whether our organization is ‘anti-Semitic’.”

“Once again, we have ZERO affiliation with Women’s March Inc.,” the post said. “We are an independent organization that decries hate in any form.”

After learning there would be no Grant Park march, west suburban supporters planned the first Fox Valley Women’s March in Geneva, where the lineup of speakers includes U.S. Reps. Lauren Underwood and Sean Casten, two political newcomers who flipped their suburban Congressional seats blue in the midterm election.

“The march in Geneva is a locally led march” not affiliated with Women’s March Inc., said a news release for the event, adding that local fundraising is covering costs.

Other women’s march groups across the country have been pushing back against national leaders.

Houston Women’s March, which has changed its name to Houston Women March On, emphasized its independence from national leaders in March, chiding them in a statement titled “What we WON’T stand for.”

“… we ask the national organization to go beyond merely noting that ‘Farrakhan’s statements about Jewish, queer, and trans people are not aligned with the Women’s March Unity Principles’ and make a clearer and stronger renunciation of anti-Semitism, hate speech and the destructive actions that spring from hate-filled language,” the statement said.

Organizers in New Orleans last month announced they were canceling their local women’s march.

“Many of the sister marches have asked the leaders of Women’s March, Inc. to resign but as of today, they have yet to do so,” the group posted on Facebook. “The controversy is dampening efforts of sister marches to fundraise, enlist involvement (and) find sponsors and attendee numbers have drastically declined this year. New Orleans is no exception.”

Rifts within the national leadership date back to the start of the marches, when an early organizer expressed concerns about anti-Semitism but said she was sidelined from the group and that her Jewish identity played a role, according to the New York Times. Two women’s march events are scheduled in New York this weekend, one led by a chapter affiliated with the national leaders.

These tussles follow a rise in anti-Semitic incidents nationwide, which spiked nearly 60 percent in 2017, according the Anti-Defamation League; that was the biggest single-year increase and the second-highest number reported since the group began tracking incidents in 1979.

“All I’m asking is don’t support leaders who are anti-Semitic,” Newman Kamin said. “And when we think about who we want to make the world a better place, as we work on issues like racism, don’t ignore that anti-Semitism unfortunately still is an issue in this country.”

eleventis@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @angie_leventis