A-Infos (en) Protesters and Police Outnumber Klan at Rally

[Tom Burghardt <tburghardt@igc.apc.org>]

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     PROTESTERS AND POLICE OUTNUMBER KLAN AT RALLY
     40 WHITE SUPREMACISTS DWARFED BY 500 OPPONENTS
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     The Sun (Baltimore)
     Sunday, February 8, 1998
     http://www.sunspot.net/news/19980208/maryland/
 
     By Dan Fesperman and Dan Thanh Dang
     SUN STAFF
 
     They were outnumbered more than 20 to 1 by a conglomerate of
protesters, police and the press, but 40 or so members of the Ku
Klux Klan had their say anyway yesterday for about an hour
outside the State House in Annapolis.
   
     Hardly anyone but the Klan members, however, could hear
their amplified white-supremacist message, because they were
surrounded by a precautionary cordon of buses, fire hoses,
highway barriers and more than 350 police clad in riot gear.
   
     The result was that neither the Klan members nor their 500
or so opponents went home completely satisfied after being
deprived of the very confrontation both sides sought. The line of
buses and a blocklong buffer zone prevented them from seeing each
other, much less hearing each other's words in the competing
noise.
   
     The arrangement prompted one hooded Klan member, a woman
with a heavy Baltimore accent, to shout angrily into the
microphone, "It's our choice whether we let the people see us,
not [the police]. They are denying us our rights."
   
     On the anti-Klan side, Katie Miller, 18, of Annapolis,
complained about the metal detectors demonstrators had to pass
through just to reach the barriers, saying, "If they're supposed
to be promoting hate and we're supposed to be promoting love, why
are the police treating us like we're criminals?"
   
     The passion behind such emotions is exactly why State Police
decided to keep the crowds apart, said Captain Greg Shipley.
   
     He said three people -- all anti-Klan protesters -- were
arrested for climbing over a barricade separating the groups.
Charged with disorderly conduct, Shipley said, were Sharon M.
Ceci, 48, and William T. Goodin, 45, both of Baltimore, and
Christopher P. Johnson, 21, of Washington.
   
     "This is a unique setup, but it is what we felt was
necessary," Shipley said of the elaborate security. "This [Klan]
chapter is known to have been involved in instances of violence
as recently as three weeks ago in Memphis," where he said a Klan
rally resulted in 26 arrests during a violent confrontation.
   
     The security measures included the ferrying of the Klan
members to the State House from a remote parking lot west of
town, on two buses from the Maryland Department of Corrections.
The buses came and went on side streets closed to traffic.
   
     The anti-Klan event, which began an hour earlier than the
march, ended at Church Circle. There, the multiracial crowd
squeezed into St. Anne's Episcopal Church for a unity rally
featuring such speakers as Gov. Parris N. Glendening, Rep. Elijah
E. Cummings, and Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, all Democrats.
   
     "When I first heard the Ku Klux Klan was holding a rally at
the State House," Glendening said from the pulpit, "I was
outraged. I was angry. I was also saddened. I was outraged that
people from outside of this city would come here to provoke
hatred and racism.
   
     "But I reject those earlier feelings of anger and sadness
because I now have a sense of hope and joy," Glendening said to a
chorus of amens. "We have shown here today that there is much
that unites us. We are the real Maryland, not that vulgarness out
there."
   
     Klan speakers targeted a wide range of enemies, railing
profanely against African-Americans, Jews, foreigners, the news
media and the federal government. But a steady stream of racial
epithets left little doubt about which group they despised the
most.
   
     Their rally milled about a statue of Thurgood Marshall, the
first African-American Supreme Court justice.
   
     Although Shipley said it was the largest Klan rally in the
state in recent memory, the turnout was hardly a show of local or
even statewide strength. About a dozen of the 40 Klan members
came from Pennsylvania, according to one Klansman wearing a
"Pennsylvania Invisible Empire" patch on his white robe. Others
were from Delaware and Virginia, and the event's organizing
chapter is based in Butler, Ind. Shipley estimated that fewer
than 20 were from Maryland, well below the Klan parades numbering
into the hundreds that marched through Annapolis in the 1920s.
   
     The anti-Klan marchers took comfort in this disparity in
numbers, and even the Klan members couldn't ignore the
difference.
   
     "You know," said one Klan speaker, "it makes me sick that
there are probably more white people out there standing against
us than there are standing with us."
   
     The reason for the Klan rally was to protest Maryland's
observance of Black History Month, said Jeff Berry, a member from
Indiana. "Where's White History Month?" he said. "We have people
who've come for a peaceful demonstration, and that's all we
want."
 
     Copyright 1998 The Sun. All Rights Reserved.
 
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