KKK Rally Memphis TN 03/30/13 - Counter Protester Defends 1st Amdt against Oppression

[patrice]

Last edited Tue Apr 2, 2013, 12:12 AM - Edit history (1)

A controversy over the naming of state and city parks in Tennessee was met by the Klu Klux Klan by protesting the re-naming of a Memphis park, which had been named for slave trader and Confederate hero Nathan Bedford Forrest. Plans for the KKK protest were given significant favoritism, by Mayor A.C. Wharton, with the use of city resources such as a convention site, a city bus, and even a meeting room in city hall, not to mention the presence of appx. 200 Memphis police men and women and the city's swat team in full riot gear, full-on chain-linked and barbed-wire "free speech" pens, and air-port style body searches to protect less than three dozen Klansmen from a few hundred counter-protest marchers.

Though counter-protest plans met with persistent bureaucratic impediments, various groups, facilitated by the IWW, coalesced and marched anyway, tolerated the usual attempts to provoke and fracture participants, and then stood some three hours in light rain for a Klan which, apparently, was too threatened to show itself.

In this video clip, a counter-protesting citizen eloquently addresses a teachable moment for the Swat team, assembled on the other side of the barricade that protects the Klan from him and from the 1st Amendment:

Background:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/07/nathan-bedford-forrest-park_n_2637953.html

[freshwest]

1. Thanks for the report, patrice. He was very good. Did the ACLU help with the counter protest?

[patrice]

2. I don't know about the ACLU. I talked to an inter-faith lady minister and maybe we

could expect that someone like that would seek the ACLU's advice.

The counter-protest problems largely had to do with marching. If people were okay about just staying in the pen, they might not have sought out the ACLU.

NAACP apparently put out that people should stay home, but it was also pretty evident that there were about as many observers in various places along our route through the city as there were counter-protestors.

However, the local contacts were through my IWW friends, so there's a lot that I don't know.

[Jamaal510]

3. "You're facing the wrong direction"

My sentiments exactly.

[patrice]

4. My sense was that the counter-protester was getting his point across with most of

the police within ear-shot, pretty effectively.