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"It was like capturing lighting in a bottle," Harris said of the event that came on the heels of President Trump's inauguration. She returned for the Women's March in 2018.
Once again, the 52-year-old media analyst had been looking forward to joining the demonstration Saturday, this time to celebrate the record number of women elected to Congress.
Then about two months ago, Harris read reports criticizing the demonstration's leaders for refusing to cut ties with the Nation of Islam and denounce its black-nationalist leader, Louis Farrakhan.
Harris, who is Jewish, began to have second thoughts. She did not want to appear to be endorsing a man known for making anti-Semitic statements. Yet she also worried that by sitting out, she would be feeding into an attempt by some "trolls" to sow division between black and Jewish women.
"As a moral issue, I really don't know where to come down on this," said Harris, who as of last week still hadn't purchased a plane ticket.
Her experience is shared by Jewish women across the country for whom the decision of whether to attend the march has become unexpectedly personal and fraught.
Like Harris, some say they feel forced to choose between their Jewish identity and their desire to demonstrate for women's rights and social justice.
Yet others said the recent controversy should further motivate Jewish women to be present at the Women's March, to spark a dialogue about anti-Semitism and serve as a bridge between the Jewish community and other groups on the progressive left.
"We need to seek more common ground," said Laurie Solnick, a 65-year-old federal retiree living in Washington. "You don't do that by turning your back."
The controversy also has prompted some Jewish organizations to severe ties with the District march.
It's unclear how many people the Women's March will draw this year. In an application to the National Park Service, organizers estimated more than half a million people would attend. But Dana Fisher, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland who studies and tracks protest movements, said turnout probably will number in the tens of thousands, weather permitting.
So far about 9,400 people have expressed interest in attending the event on Facebook.
The march's leaders have outlined a political platform prioritizing reproductive rights, equal pay, raising the federal minimum wage and passing the Equal Rights Amendment, among other items.
Meanwhile, amid the allegations of anti-Semitism, local women's marches in cities across the country, such as New York City, have made a point of distancing their events from the national Women's March, Inc., which is hosting the D.C. march.
The controversy began brewing in February, when one of the national co-chairs of the march, Tamika Mallory, attended the Nation of Islam's annual Saviours' Day event in Chicago, where Farrakhan made incendiary remarks about Jews.
Then in news reports last month, one of the early organizers of the Women's March, a Jewish woman named Vanessa Wruble, accused two of the march's current leaders, Mallory and Carmen Perez, of making anti-Semitic comments about the roles Jews have played in racism, the slave trade and the prison industry.
As a result of the divisions, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington released a statement last week saying it could not endorse the march or encourage Jewish women and their allies to attend. But the council encouraged Jewish women to attend independent local marches in nearby cities such as Baltimore, Annapolis and Philadelphia.
Nancy Kaufman, chief executive of the National Council of Jewish Women, a sponsor of the 2017 Women's March, said the allegations of anti-Semitism have alarmed many Jews who are already on edge following a recent spike in anti-Semitic hate crimes and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that left 11 people dead. Until the Women's March thoroughly addresses its issues with anti-Semitism, Kaufman said, "we cannot as an organization engage" with this year's event.
Zioness, an advocacy group promoting Zionism in progressive spaces, is hosting a "teach-in" in Washington on Tuesday to discuss alternative forms of activism for Jewish women who feel marginalized by the Women's March.
Meanwhile, Women's March leaders have doubled down on denouncing anti-Semitism and reaching out to Jewish women. The organization updated its "Unity Principles" to incorporate Jewish women, and Monday announced a new steering committee that includes three Jewish women.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Linda Sarsour, one of the four co-chairs of the Women's March, said the leaders reject Farrakhan's anti-Semitic, homophobic and transphobic statements. But Sarsour declined to specifically reject Farrakhan, saying that she has never met him personally and that the organization believes in "attacking the forces of evil" and not specific individuals.
Mallory has said the Nation of Islam came to her aid after the death of her son's father about 17 years ago. In recent days, the co-chairs have met for hours-long meetings with rabbis and Jewish leaders to discuss how anti-Semitism intersects with other types of racism and oppression, Sarsour said.
"I have never seen anti-Semitism discussed in the way it's being discussed right now in the progressive left," Sarsour said, adding that she respects the choices of Jewish women opting out of this year's march and is grateful for the time that many Jewish women are taking "to reflect on these moments."
"I say to all my Jewish sisters that you are welcome, and we have a common enemy, that is white supremacy," Sarsour said.
To Sarsour and some Jewish women, the rifts highlight the challenges the progressive left has faced in organizing and sustaining an intersectional feminist movement, which recognizes that women's identities are shaped in different ways by race, class, gender and ethnicity.
Alliances between Jewish and black communities have been instrumental to decades of social justice movements. The NAACP worked closely with the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish groups during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1965, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched side by side from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery.
But the close relationship between the groups has become strained over the years, particularly amid tension over the Nation of Islam and Israel.
In 2016, for example, some Jewish leaders condemned the Black Lives Matter movement for releasing a platform that accused Israel of committing "genocide" against the Palestinian people.
Elizabeth Sternberg, 61, of Maryland, is a lifelong marcher, growing up in the District of Columbia and going to anti-war marches in the 1960s and 1970s.
"I want to show up as an ally for people who do not have the privilege that I have," she said about this year's Women's March. "It's sort of an obligation."
But as a Jewish woman, she finds it "unacceptable" that the co-chairs of the march refuse to disavow Farrakhan. "And I think that may be, for me, the tipping point."
Shari Schwartz, a 56-year-old retired federal analyst, compared the Women's March leaders' resistance to decrying Farrakhan to Trump's hesitation to disavow white nationalists after a deadly clash of protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
"I can't march with women who oppose one hate monger but refuse to condemn another," said Schwartz, a Virginia resident.
Rachel Lachenauer, 29, works for a reproductive health organization and identifies as a progressive queer woman. But she's also the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, and she resents progressive circles that make her feel unwelcome due to her support of Israel.
"My Jewish identity is so inextricably linked to who I am as a person," said Lachenauer, who is leaning toward not participating in the Women's March. "I won't participate in a situation that makes me choose between my identities. I've been a Jew my entire life, and I've been a feminist my entire life. There is no way to separate those things for me."
But Rachel Nadelman, 41, feels that some people are too quick to "get on the bandwagon" claiming that something is anti-Semitic "without looking through it."
"In general, white people who want to be a part of change need to get a little more thick-skinned about criticisms coming out about white people," Nadelman said.
In her view, opting out of the Women's March would be taking the easy route. She harked back to last year, when D.C. Council member Trayon White espoused an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. Instead of calling on him to resign, many Jewish leaders offered forgiveness and invited him to take part in Seders during Passover.
"We all come with our biases, and the only way that we can really change that is not if Jewish people completely remove themselves," Nadelman said.
Sabrina Sojourner is a spiritual leader in a group straddling both sides of this debate - African-American Jews. She is bringing together a group of about 100 Jewish women of color from across the country to march together in Saturday's D.C. event.
Sojourner expressed frustration with times in which she has felt the white Jewish community has aimed its anger at black groups such as the Nation of Islam for alleged anti-Semitism. She argued Jews should instead maintain their focus on white-nationalist groups, "where the violence is coming from."
"I'm not saying that anti-Semitism is not real within the black community, but to equate it or even raise it higher than white supremacy is just disproportionate, and it also undermines our Jewish values," she said.
Sojourner referenced the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, or "repairing the world," a call to social action against injustice.
"We're not supposed to be repairing the world just when people are treating us nicely," Sojourner said.
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