![]() |
Teresa Shook | |
---|---|
Born | November 7, 1956 |
Occupation(s) | Lawyer, Activist |
Known for | Founder of the Women's March |
Teresa Shook (born 1956) [1] is a retired American lawyer from Indiana who now lives in Hawaii. [2] She is best known as the founder of the Women's March. [3]
The Women's March idea arose soon after the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States in 2016. [2] A friend had signed Shook up for "Pantsuit Nation", a Facebook page created to rally Hillary Clinton supporters, and Shook went there to find like-minded people. She posted on that page the statement: "We have to march." [4] After eliciting a response, Shook subsequently created a Facebook event for a march in Washington, D.C., following the inauguration. Meanwhile, Bob Bland, a mother living in New York City, also created an event. Within a single day hundreds of thousands of individuals were "attending" the march's Facebook event. This surge in interest was a catalyst for creating the organization that led to the 2017 Women's March. [3] "I didn’t have a plan or a thought about what would happen," Shook told Reuters. "i just kept saying, I think we should march." I was in such shock and disbelief that this type of sentiment could win,” said Shook, a retired lawyer from Indiana with four grandchildren. “We had to let people know that is not who were are." [2]
In November 2018, Shook criticized the leadership of the Women's March national organization as being "anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQIA rights". Specifically mentioning Linda Sarsour, Carmen Perez, Tamika Mallory and Bland, she called for them all to step down. [5]