The Million Family March
Media Monitor | By Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid | November 13, 2000
If this sounds like a radical gathering, rather than a family affair, you would not know it from reading some of the stories about this event.
Writing in the Washington Times, columnist Adrienne T. Washington covered the Million Family March by saying, ‘Never mind the rambling, sometimes ranting political speeches…” She also said “...it was not the organizers but the purpose that mattered most.” That purpose, she said, was family. She had to say this because the march, organized by a church group that pays her salary, featured extremist rhetoric and calls for racial struggle in the U.S. It was something that no decent family, black or white, should have participated in. The racist leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, got the most attention for his role in sponsoring the Million Family March. He spoke, along with another figure from his organization who claimed that the AIDS and Ebola viruses were genetically engineered and part of a “biological holocaust” against black people. Another speaker was Communist Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. Still another was Ron Daniels of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who said he remembered Ortega presenting a Soviet assault rifle, an AK-47, to Maurice Bishop of Grenada. Bishop was another Marxist, overthrown when President Ronald Reagan ordered U.S. troops to invade the island to rescue endangered American students. Daniels concluded his speech with the words, “The struggle continues.” In the context of his reference to an AK-47 and Daniel Ortega, it had an ominous sound to it. If this sounds like a radical gathering, rather than a family affair, you would not know it from reading some of the stories about this event. Unfortunately, the Washington Times turned in a dismal performance. The Times had a conflict of interest, since it is funded by businesses associated with the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon, which organized the march together with the Nation of Islam. The story by Clarence Williams, John Drake and Larry Witham ran under a headline claiming that the event was a day to honor family and that Farrakhan had toned down his rhetoric in his remarks. But by their own account, he called for reparations payments to black Americans, on the ground that their ancestors had been held as slaves. This proposal could cost trillions and inflame racial tension. The story mentioned some of the extreme rhetoric, but it failed to note that a convicted cop-killer, Mumia Abu-Jamal delivered a taped message to the gathering. The story mentioned the involvement of the Unification Church but didn’t ask any of its representatives to comment on the radical and racist rhetoric. The story also failed to mention that march organizers produced a political manifesto which claimed to offer solutions to various social problems. On the issue of drugs, the document cited The Final Call, Louis Farrakhan’s newspaper, as a credible source for the bogus charge that the CIA introduced crack cocaine into black and Latino communities. A section on “political prisoners” claimed that the cop-killer, Abu-Jamal, was “unjustly” on death row. This was echoed by another rally speaker, Al Sharpton, who said “many” of the two million people in jail or prison in the U.S. were political prisoners. This rally should have been exposed by the Washington Times as the fraud it really was. The Times’ owners ought to be ashamed.
Reed Irvine is the former Chairman of Accuracy In Media and Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of the AIM Report.
0 Comments | Post a Comment
