Amy Siskind (born December 16, 1965) is an American activist and writer. She is the author of The List: A Week-by-Week Reckoning of Trump’s First Year (2018) and organizer of the We the People March.
As a Wall Street executive, Siskind was a pioneer and expert in the distressed debt trading market. She became the first female Managing Director at Wasserstein Perella & Co. in 1996, at the age of 31, and later ran trading departments at Morgan Stanley and Imperial Capital, where she was also a partner.[7][8] Siskind worked 20 years on Wall Street before retiring in 2006.[9]
The New Agenda and political activism
Siskind was an early supporter of Hillary Clinton during the 2008 United States presidential election cycle, having previously supported Clinton's re-election bid to the United States Senate, and having taken her daughter to meet Clinton at an event in 2006.[10] Siskind has drawn criticism from liberals for voting for John McCain over Barack Obama.[11]
In August 2008, Siskind co-founded The New Agenda in her living room with 30 Hillary Clinton supporters who alleged sexism and misogyny were at play during the 2008 election.[12][13] The New Agenda is a non-profit organization "dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls by bringing about systemic change in the media, at the workplace, at school and at home".[13] As of August 2019[update] she is president of the organization.[14][15] It focuses on issues that affect the success of women, including pay discrimination, sexual assault and sexual harassment.[9]
Siskind was reported to be one of the earliest supporters of the Me Too movement, sparked by a tweet from Alyssa Milano on October 15, 2017, for which Siskind tweeted her own support within the first hundred minutes.[16] In October 2018, in the days following the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, Siskind posted on Facebook that she was organizing an anti-hate vigil in her Westchester County community. After a local newspaper ran a story about it, Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes and his family, who lived in the nearby community of Larchmont, New York, appeared at Siskind's door without invitation or forewarning; she called the police.[17]
The List
Siskind speaking at the We The People march
In November 2016, Siskind started keeping a weekly list of not-normal events of the Trump administration, and posting the lists on social media.[9][18] Siskind indicated that she did not intend to merely recite normal political disputes, but to catalogue "things that are uncharacteristic of our democracy".[18] In September 2017, she was named in Politico's 2017 "Politico 50".[18] In March 2018 she compiled the first year of weekly lists and published them as The List: A Week-by-Week Reckoning of Trump's First Year. In June 2018, Siskind started The Weekly List podcast to accompany the lists;[19] writing in Forbes in July 2018, Jo Piazza listed this as one of the "Podcasts Created by Women You Need to Be Listening To Right Now".[20] In July 2017, the United States Library of Congress began archiving her weekly reports.[18] Siskind acknowledged in an interview the following year that a downside of taking such a highly public stance is that "I can tweet things that are inarticulate and be attacked for months and get death threats".[21]
In 2018, The List: A Week-by-Week Reckoning of Trump's First Year was called one of the best books of 2018 by Carlos Lozada of The Washington Post.[22] Her podcast was also recognized by Marie Claire in 2019.[23] Siskind also organized the 2019 We the People March, a national march advertised as an event to remind elected officials that they work for the American people.[24] The march took place on September 21, 2019, in Washington D.C., with others in various cities across the United States.[24]
In 2021, Siskind donated The List collection to the Annenberg School library. The List was archived along with Siskind's podcast and other content she had created.[25]
^ ab"About Amy". The Weekly List. Retrieved July 6, 2018.
^University, Office of Web Communications, Cornell. "What I Wish I Knew at 22". Cornell. Retrieved July 6, 2018.((cite web)): CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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