WASHINGTON — A conservative rally this Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech has renewed yet another tense national debate in the United States about race relations and the Tea Party movement.
Fox News personality Glenn Beck said his event, called “Restoring Honour,” is meant to “recognize our First Amendment rights and honour the service members who fight to protect those freedoms.”
He’s vowed that the rally will be “one for the history books” and will represent a “turning point in America.”
Even though Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor rumoured to be eyeing a run for president in 2012, will headline the event, Beck has insisted “Restoring Honour” is not political. Organizers even say they’ll confiscate political signs “as they may deter from the peaceful message we are bringing to Washington.”
Nonetheless, Beck has spoken of the need to “fix the capital” in the weeks leading up to the event, which is being funded in part by the National Rifle Association, a pair of Republican senators, and leading Tea Party groups that include FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots.
Beck has long infuriated liberals in the U.S., particularly after calling President Barack Obama a fascist and a racist last year. But his comments about the civil rights movement in advance of this weekend’s rally have fanned the flames of outrage even further.
Beck, considered by many the spiritual leader of the Tea Party and someone who champions the movement’s causes, said the rally will “reclaim the civil rights movement,” which he described as having been “distorted” and “turned upside down.”
“We are on the right side of history. We are on the side of individual freedoms and liberties, and damn it, we will reclaim the civil rights movement.”
Brittney Cooper, a professor of gender and race relations at the University of Alabama, called Beck’s remarks a slap in the face not just to African-Americans, but to King’s legacy.
“It’s insulting, and Dr. King would have been completely disheartened to see that race relations in the United States are polarized and getting worse, thanks to these staunch right-wing ideologies,” Cooper said. “But it fits in with a long history of conservatives trying to co-opt the civil rights movement.”
Civil rights groups have expressed dismay at the timing of Beck’s event. In response, Rev. Al Sharpton and other civil rights leaders have decided to hold their own event, planning to march from a downtown Washington high school to the site of a scheduled King memorial near the Lincoln Memorial.
Sharpton’s National Action Network has called Beck’s call for the expansion of states’ rights as “the exact antithesis of the civil rights movement and Dr. King’s legacy.”
Even Beck’s usual supporters seem to be distancing themselves from the event, given that it falls on the anniversary of King’s stirring call for racial equality in 1963 as he stood on the steps of the iconic memorial, speaking to a sea of faces, black and white alike.
Beck’s employer, Fox News, stressed this week that the rally is the brainchild of Beck himself, not the network. Fox added it has no plans to broadcast live coverage of the event.
Some in the Tea Party movement aren’t impressed either, expressing queasiness about Beck’s decision of date and venue.
At least one Tea Party group reportedly turned down Beck’s requests for assistance at the rally, while another Tea Party organizer in Maine disparaged the event as “Beckapalooza.”
“There have been discussions continuously over the last year about whether he is necessarily a force for good or not necessarily,” Andrew Ian Dodge said in an interview with Politico.com.
“Beck takes it outside of the realm of fiscal conservatism into issues that are more emotional, and make you wonder if we really want to be associated with this guy.”
Toni-Michelle Travis, a race relations professor at George Mason University in Virginia, said Beck is resonating with a bigoted group of Americans who don’t like that there’s a black man in the White House.
“There is a core that he speaks to that would like to turn the clock back to the pre-civil rights era,” she said. “The date is not coincidental. He’s speaking to people who cannot tolerate Obama as president.”
Beck’s rally has also angered those who make D.C. their home, particularly a Tea Party member’s blog post offering advice to those travelling to Washington for the event.
Bruce Majors, who says he’s lived in the city for 30 years, advised visitors to stay off the subway system’s green and yellow lines, two major transit routes into the downtown core. Critics have pointed out that most of the city’s predominately black neighbourhoods are along those lines.
Adam Serwer, a civil rights blogger on the American Prospect website, said the guide “basically goes out of its way to impose on Tea Party activists the necessity of not accidentally visiting any of D.C.’s mostly black neighbourhoods.”
Majors has since vehemently denied he’s racist, adding suggestions to the contrary could be “legally actionable.” His guide also listed the home addresses of leading congressional Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
Commenters on the Maine Tea Party organizations’s blog, however, were grateful for the public transit advice.
“I guess I need to plan a little better,” one wrote. “After all, most of us dumb Mainers never have to lock our (cars) at night; we work for a living.”
Another described D.C. as being “more dangerous than Baghdad.”