What Will You Remember?

Millons More Upstaged by 15

Yesterday, the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan's organization, held a rally in DC to help launch the millions more movement, with speakers attending from Cornell West to Al Sharpton, Russell Simmons and Congressional Black Caucus leader Rep. Mel Watts. Have you heard anything about this? No?

Maybe it's because the only news footage you've seen of a large group of African-Americans was that of the rioters in Toledo. There was looting, vandalism and random violence, all because a group of 15 clowns wanted to dress up and chant stupid slogans. Right now there are rumors that the violence was spurred on by anarchists and gang members in the counter-protest crowd, but it is still a sad state of affairs that an American city because people don't know how to handle themselves.

So a bunch of morons want to feel good about themselves by speaking bad about other groups, in the long run it doesn't really matter that much. There were only 15 of them, it wasn't exactly a threatening group. Counter-protests seemed like a reasonable idea, especially since they far outnumbered the idiots sporting swastikas, but once things turned violent and out of control, the Nazis' protest had more than acheived its aims. What should have been a local display that was denounced by community leaders and the local media suddenly became fodder for the national media, with the added bonus of showing African-Americans in a particularly dim light.

The most recognizable leaders of the African-American community were on the Mall in Washington demonstrating peacefully and trying to effect change in the political process as it should be done, (even if some of what they were saying was as full of hate and racism as anything the Nazis in Toledo were spouting), and thousands attended to show their support for the movement. It seems that they wasted their time. The people they most need to convince didn't see it. They were too busy looking at video of a riot in Toledo and wondering "What is wrong with these people?"