Carmen Perez

I learned it from a man who would never take another mother’s child away.”[3] Perez started her undergraduate career at Oxnard College where she received an associate degree in liberal arts.

Through the Chicano Latino Resource Center, Carmen was mentored by psychology professor and Chicana feminist Aida Hurtado who she also worked for as her research assistant.

[5] In 2001, Perez began work with the Santa Cruz Youth Community Restoration Program,[6] providing alternatives to incarceration for juvenile offenders.

[2][12] By 2006, Perez had become a board member of Barrios Unidos and started working for the Santa Cruz County probation department[7] as an intake and investigations officer focused on system accountability.

[16] In May 2014, she had the opportunity to share her life's work and delivered her 1st TEDx Talk inside Ironwood State Prison[7] hosted by Richard Branson and produced by Scott Budnick.

[18][19] Perez's contributions included facilitating the creation of the mobilization's Unity Principles,[20] leading the Artist Table and Honorary Co-Chair selection,[21] and recruiting over 500 partners.

[30] Bari Weiss has criticized Perez for her support of Assata Shakur, a former Black Liberation Army member convicted of murder, and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

[35] In 2018, Teresa Shook, the founder of the Women's March, called for Perez and some of her co-organizers to step down, because they had failed to adequately distance themselves from the anti-Semitic and homophobic rhetoric of Louis Farrakhan,[36] while an article published in The New York Times discussed accounts by two sources that Perez and Mallory had made disparaging comments to Vanessa Wruble, then a fellow organizer, about her Jewish heritage; Wruble later recounted that she felt "pushed out" because of her Jewish identity.

[37] In January 2019, Perez published an op-ed in the Jewish magazine The Forward, where she stated, “I want to be clear: our movement is a safe place for Jewish women, our leadership abhors anti-Semitism and homophobia, and these kinds of comments are and will always be unacceptable.” In the same article, she acknowledged the failure of the Women's March to act rapidly enough, saying, “I want to be unequivocal in affirming that the organization failed to act rapid enough to condemn the egregious and hateful statements made by a figure who is not associated with the Women’s March in any way.”[38] She also published an op-ed in the New York Daily News, where she again took accountability while acknowledging other factors related to her silence, writing, "after reflecting deeply on what has taken place over the last few months and having finally emerged from a difficult pregnancy at the age of 41, I want to address these issues, accept responsibility and re-commit myself to being a moral leader.