WASHINGTON, Oct 15: Thousands of African-Americans, young and old, gathered in Washington on Saturday, frustrated with lingering inequalities but hopeful that their show of force would mark a first step toward change.
“This is the start of getting black people together to get organization to get some change,” said Amon Ra, 50, an Ohio state employee who drove more than 10 hours with his son to attend the ‘Millions More Movement’ event a decade after the ‘Million Man March’ to empower blacks in the United States.
“We feel that, since black men occupy the majority of the unemployment rate, that we need to get some change to get them employed so they can take care of their families,” Ra said, as marchers trudged to the venue in colourful T-shirts, some toting signs reading ‘Defend Affirmative Action’.
The ‘Millions More Movement’ is aimed at bringing men, women and youth into ‘an effective national movement with the goal of transforming American society and eliminating poverty and injustice’, organizers said in a statement.
The event is being organized by a broad coalition, including the Nation of Islam led by Louis Farrakhan, Reverend Jesse Jackson of the National Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and rap mogul-activist Russell Simmons, among others.
“As was starkly evidenced in the revelations following Hurricane Katrina, our poor are being grossly underserved,” the statement said. “The Millions More Movement is challenging all of us to rise above the things that have kept us divided.”
For Sarah Thompson, an ebullient student at Spelman College in Georgia, it was an occasion not to be missed.
“I came to say that young women are so powerful,” said Thompson, 21. “And that young people are not apathetic.
“We are going to defend the dreams of our forefathers!” she said on the National Mall, within sight of the White House.
“There are so many things – health care, the economy” — that make marching worthwhile, said Ernest Twyman, a spry 86-year-old Washington resident.
“There is not much being done for our people. (President George W.) Bush hasn’t done anything. The rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer,” Twyman said.
“You see, we were freed from one thing and now we are in economic slavery,” Twyman said. “And economic slavery is just as bad as physical slavery.”
Among the celebrities expected to fuel turnout are hip-hop and Hollywood stars Snoop Dogg, LL Cool J and Queen Latifah, as well as designer-rapper-actor-activist Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, Public Enemy and Wyclef Jean.
Rapper Kanye West, who accused Mr Bush during a nationally televised Hurricane Katrina fundraiser of not caring about blacks, also supports the movement.
Arguably the most powerful African-American politician, Democratic Party’s rising star Barack Obama, a senator from Illinois, was scheduled to be in his home state on Saturday, his website said. Mr Obama is currently the only black person in the US Senate.
Said Louis Farrakhan before of the event: “We want to mobilize, sensitize, organize our own people for our own growth and liberation. We are tired of begging others to do what we have the capacity to do for ourselves.”
James Gibson, a cable engineer who drove in his family of six from Connecticut, said he was keen to hear Farrakhan speak and hoped ‘that we as a whole can get together and get unified’.
African-Americans made up 12.9 per cent of the total US population in 2000, government data show.—AFP
