Views » May 21, 2005

Millions More Amassing

By Salim Muwakkil

The Republican Party’s “full spectrum dominance” of the national government and most of the corporate media has produced an anxious mood within the African-American community. Conditions are so bleak in so many areas we seem on the verge of a social emergency.

A sense of impending crisis has jump-started efforts to unify the black community. Last month at the National Press Club in Washington D.C., a diverse group of black leaders announced that as the next step in this unity campaign, the 10th anniversary commemoration of the Million Man March will be transformed into the Millions More Movement.

“This is a movement, not just a march,” said the Rev. Willie F. Wilson, pastor of the Union Temple Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and executive director of the event. An ongoing “movement is needed to help the downtrodden among us,” he told those assembled, adding it was time for a “spiritual, economic and social rebirth in communities that many have given up as lost.”

The event, scheduled for October 14-16 in the nation’s capital, was conceived by Minister Louis Farrakhan, the controversial leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI); Farrakhan also was the architect of the October 16, 1995 Million Man March.

There are more than 100 conveners, including the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, author/commentator Julianne Malveaux, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and Vashti McKenzie, the bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Firming up Farrakhan’s radical flank is convener Malik Zulu Shabazz, leader of the New Black Panther Party. Although the list is extraordinarily broad-based and ecumenical, the event has already drawn criticism, primarily because of Farrakhan’s involvement.

“It’s very sad that the only leader the African-American community can find to rally around is an unrepentant bigot, an anti-Semite who still holds to his views,” says Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The ADL has taken the lead in denouncing the event but other organizations may share Foxman’s distress about Farrakhan’s leadership. Farrakhan supporters contend he no longer holds racist and anti-semitic views.

The fiery NOI leader’s role in the 1995 march also tarnished that effort in the eyes of many, preventing several black leaders from lending support to the gathering. But after witnessing the spectacle of hundreds of thousands of black men gathered in fraternity and peace, a number of African-American leaders retroactively jumped on the bandwagon.

The Million Man March was deemed a huge success by many in the black community. Most accounts in the black media estimated that at least two million men attended. However, the event was criticized by leading black feminists for its gender exclusivity, its focus on abstract notions like “atonement” rather than on issues of social injustice, and its lack of programmatic follow-through.

Supporters were also reluctant to concede they squandered some of the march’s potential by failing to amass a database of participants, propose a specific agenda or design a fund-raising mechanism.

Organizers of the Millions More Movement apparently took their cue from those criticisms. This event will be much more inclusive: Women, children, gays and other races all are welcome. “This will be a coalition of national leaders working to create a framework that goes beyond just marching to actually making fundamental changes,” Chae Carrier, a Millions More Movement spokesperson, told Blackamericaweb.com.

Accordingly, the mission statement of the movement lists an overall agenda and a number of demands. All aspects of community development are included in a vague list of agenda items, such as educational development, economic development and political development. The demands include an end to police brutality, racial profiling and substandard education.

For several years, Farrakhan has been trying to transform his image from that of an intransigent black supremacist to that of an avuncular, social conciliator. He’s sought to intervene in a variety of social hot spots, including truce efforts between warring street gangs, reconciling rap “beefs” and confronting the scourge of black-on-black crime through the NOI’s anti-crime campaigns. He’s also reconciled with his critics in the Muslim world who once argued that the NOI’s race-based doctrine was Islamic sacrilege.

Apparently his image has been rehabilitated enough to attract a wide range of supporters to his latest brainchild. Malveaux, the feminist whose car was vandalized following her vehement criticism of the Million Man March, applauded Farrakhan’s new attitude. “This time, Minister Farrakhan has brought us language which is unifying. He’s evolved, our people have evolved, the movement has evolved and we’re moving forward.”

• Help In These Times publish more articles like this. Donate today!
• Subscribe today and save 46% off the newsstand price!

• subscribe to print magazine

• stay in touch with our email newsletter

  Subscribe to our regular weekly e-mail newsletter. It's packed with updates on recent and upcoming stories, events, campaigns and things every progressive should be informed about.

   

• email this article to a friend

  Your Name Your Email Recipient Email

  Personal message Thought you might be interested in this article from In These Times.

   

  Please help us prevent spam by verifying the word you see in the image above

  Send to multiple recipients. Just separate each email address with a comma.

• Reader Comments

  A black movement in 2004?  Come on!!  That will mean a union of Farakhan, Bill Cosby, Armstrong Williams, black ghetto dwellers, black upper-miiddle-class folk, and black workers.  This is not a group with vaguely similar interests.  The whole enterprise is doomed to failure.  A working class movement is what is needed.  A white cart-pusher at Wal-mart, a Black cart-pusher at Target, and a Sikh cart-pusher in a sepermarket in South Africa all have the same interests.  The class struggle is the only one that can achieve anything in these times.

  Posted by Maximillian Al-Dakari on May 21, 2005 at 7:46 PM

  From my understanding, Bill Cosby in on board with the Millions More Movement and its stated goals and it may come as a surprise but Armstrong Williams was actually a speaker at the 2000 “Million Family March”.

  The similiar interest is quoted from the agenda statement online at http://www.millionsmoremovement.com/:

  “..the masses of our people are slipping further behind. We have a larger middle class, many more millionaires and a few billionaires, however, the overall condition of our people is worse. We have more entrepreneurs, more college graduates, more persons holding political office, more Black mayors, city councilors, aldermen, state representatives, city managers, more corporate executives, yet the masses have not been empowered or improved.”

  “The masses of our people are on a Death March into the oven of social deterioration, broken homes, broken marriages, broken minds, broken spirit, evolving from a string of broken promises by government and leadership that has failed to help our people turn around the misery and wretchedness of our condition.”

  “The knowledge to correct the horror of our condition is among us. The potential force and power to cause us to rise as a people is among us. The finance to fuel our rise is also among us.”

  “What then is needed?  It is the unity of our leadership and organizations. Our unity, the pooling of our resources, financially and intellectually will solve 95% of our problems.”

  I couldn’t agree with this above statement more.

  Of course there will always be haters but I would urge the organizers of this effort, please maintain your focus on operational unity and to hell with the doom-sayers!

  Posted by John Blaz on May 21, 2005 at 8:04 PM

  Frankly it is time for this white boy at least to follow the leadership of the more independent Americans of color. They have no illusions of how “naturally great” America is.

  The Demoplican Party is hopeless. Their new contract with corporate America doesn’t even call for them to win elections anymore. Just to keep taking baby steps rightward, enabling the Republicrats to do the same.

  American Jews, traditionally progressive, are now on the “War Against Terrorism” bandwagon, seemingly feeling that if they will just avert their eyes while the neo-cons and Ariel Sharon accomplish the final solution they will at last enter the land of milk and honey. Witness Abraham Foxman’s comments above.

  No, we need leadership, and I look to Americans of color to provide it.

  Posted by John Francis Lee on May 22, 2005 at 2:44 AM

  Hey John, did you know that there’s an old Yiddish term for a republican jew?  Yup, the word is “SCHMUCK.”

  Posted by Lefty on May 22, 2005 at 5:14 PM

  John, BTW, true leadership is a rare characteristic.  It matters not what a leaders race is, only that he or she has a vision that followers can relate to and agree with, and has the energy to make himself known to the public.  Bill Clinton was the closest thing to a true leader in American national politics in many decades.  Ronald Regan had those traits.  Unfortunately he lead America closer to being a giant whorehouse than any President in U.S. history until W. Bush.  JFK and LBJ were the previous leaders who had vision, a message of good for America and the energy to take that message to the people.

  Posted by Lefty on May 22, 2005 at 5:20 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 63 posts.

Also featured Revenge of Global Finance
Crash Landing
Sanders Steps Up

Full contents
Previous issues
Subscribe and save!

Also by Salim Muwakkil

• The ‘Post-Racial’ President
  Barack Obama navigates a world where color still matters. Posted on August 24, 2009
• Government-Assisted Terrorists
  On May 20, federal and New York City authorities arrested four men on… morePosted on June 16, 2009
• The Irony of Obama’s Boycott
  America's first black president refused to attend a U.N. conference on racism.Posted on April 30, 2009
• African-Americans Back Burris
  The African-American community's unified efforts to retain Roland Burris as the lone black… morePosted on March 26, 2009
• Will Holder Hold Cops Accountable?
  Eric Holder, the first African-American attorney general, takes over a Department of Justice… morePosted on February 26, 2009