'COPS & KLAN WORK HAND-IN-HAND'
Thousands confront KKK in Manhattan
By Gery
Armsby
New York
Thousands of anti-racists turned out to confront the Ku Klux
Klan here on Oct. 23. Orchestrated efforts by City Hall and the
police department to keep angry crowds far from the Klan and
cameras backfired when three white anti-racist activists
tricked cops into allowing them near the KKK.
Harvey Mason, a 60-year-old high school guidance counselor
from Brooklyn, and two other anti-racists tore down the Klan's
lead banner. Mason landed a few punches on Grand Dragon James
Sheeley's face before being beaten to the ground by the cops
and arrested.
The number of anti-Klan protesters swelled to an estimated
10,000 by mid-afternoon. They packed Foley Square in downtown
Manhattan and the crowd spilled onto side streets in every
direction. Tourists and passersby joined in outrage when they
learned the Klan had been allowed to rally.
The huge throng was thoroughly multinational and represented
all generations, many different genders, sexualities and
physical abilities. They chanted and yelled and waved signs and
angry fists, showing their fury over the Klan's attempt to
spread its racist, murderous program in a city whose population
is predominantly people of color.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani had ordered 1,000 cops, many in full
riot gear, to forcibly keep the crowd barricaded away from the
KKK rally. The cops corralled people into three separate
fenced-off pens.
As demonstrators found themselves separated from other
sections of the counter-demonstration, they chanted, "Open the
gates! Open the gates!" Witnesses reported that cops
brutalized, pepper sprayed and dragged away dozens of anti-Klan
demonstrators. At least seven anti-racists were detained or
arrested by police.
Meanwhile, with complete cooperation and protection from the
cops, a pathetic turnout of 16 Klan members was escorted to and
from the demonstration in bulletproof jackets with a full-scale
police motorcade.
Many anti-Klan demonstrators chanted in the faces of the
cops surrounding them, "Blue by day, white by night!" and "Cops
and Klan work hand-in-hand!"
`Free Mumia!'
In almost every photograph and much of the video footage
that aired in the mainstream media coverage of the anti-Klan
rally, signs and placards demanding freedom for political
prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal were clearly visible.
Hundreds of placards linked the racism of the Klan to the
racist "justice" system that railroaded Abu-Jamal to death
row.
After the Klan dispersed, anti-racists held a spontaneous
march in support of Abu-Jamal. Activists chanted "Free Mumia
now!" and leafleted onlookers about the need to stop the
execution and win a new trial for the revolutionary
journalist.
The Ku Klux Klan's original permit to march and rally
wearing their hoods and masks had been denied by the Giuliani
administration.
Giuliani's denial of a permit was hailed by the mainstream
media as an anti-Klan move. But it was not.
Giuliani's own racist policies are a matter of record.
Juxtaposed against the Klan for one day, hizzoner thought he
could appeal to the people and communities that overwhelmingly
do not support him.
Yet at the same time that Giuliani was posing as an opponent
of the Klan, his NYPD--which has carried out countless murders
of oppressed people in this city--was bloodying the heads of
anti-Klan demonstrators and treating the fascists with kid
gloves.
Armsby is one of the anti-racist activists injured and
detained by police at the anti-Klan rally.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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