Farrakhan’s Role in March Sparks Debate

Less than three days before a planned massive demonstration by black men here, debate is raging nationwide over whether those participating in the “Million Man March” will be endorsing organizer Louis Farrakhan’s separatist vision of American race relations.

March co-sponsor Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. and Leonard F. Muhammad, Farrakhan’s chief of staff, insist that the rally and the Nation of Islam leader’s message are inseparable.

But many of those planning to attend the march said they accept only part of Farrakhan’s message of self-help and black separatism and are making their own, very different, statement by joining the gathering.

As the capital braced for potentially paralyzing crowds Monday on the Mall and along the city’s major traffic arteries, the depth of disagreement among march participants about the meaning of the event became starkly clear.

The event has also touched off a larger debate among blacks and between blacks and whites about whether the event--which excludes by design all whites and all women--would only serve to deepen hostility and distrust between the races.

Chavis said this week that the attempt to construe the march as something other than an endorsement of Farrakhan is an effort to hijack the event and “is not going to work.”

Muhammad said flatly that the people coming to Washington “are coming because they support the Honorable Louis Farrakhan, and that’s a fact.”

Farrakhan, in an interview with Reuters Television released Friday, reiterated some of the views that have made him such a divisive figure.

Speaking of people who made money by providing goods and rental homes to the black community “but didn’t offer anything back,” Farrakhan said, “When we use the term bloodsucker, it doesn’t just apply to some members of the Jewish community. . . . When the Jews left, the Palestinian Arabs came, Koreans came, Vietnamese and other ethnic and racial groups came. And so this is a type and we call them bloodsuckers.”

Many of those planning to attend the march are laboring to distance themselves from the incendiary Muslim leader while not rejecting the demonstration’s stated themes of responsibility and “atonement.”

Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.), the former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said he rejects many of Farrakhan’s beliefs as racist and exclusionary, but nonetheless plans to attend the march.

“Unless Farrakhan’s got a million legs, it’s not his march,” he said. Added Mfume aide Daniel Wilson: “It’s a case of the message superseding the messenger.”

*

Another black Maryland Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Albert R. Wynn, likewise rejected Farrakhan’s broader agenda but endorsed the purposes of Monday’s event, which is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of black men from around the nation.

Noting in a statement Friday that he was not attending to support Farrakhan or his views on race relations or religion, Wynn said: “Rather, I am marching in solidarity with government workers, bus drivers, black professionals, students and others who want African Americans to be productive and successful members of American society.

“I think it is important that those who publicly disagree with Minister Farrakhan participate in the march in order to ensure that a clear, contrary point of view is represented,” he added.

President Clinton will not attend, although the rhetoric from the White House about the march softened during the week from rejection to an emphasis on its potential “positive” impact. Clinton was said to consider many of Farrakhan’s views “repugnant” but found his message of personal responsibility and redemption to be helpful in black communities wracked by crime, drug abuse, homelessness and children born out of wedlock.

Clinton is scheduled to be in Austin, Tex., and Los Angeles on Monday, said spokesman Mike McCurry. He will attend the Concert of Hope at the Pantages Theater on Monday night and then fly back to Texas on Tuesday.

During the Texas visit, McCurry said, the President “will lay out in a philosophical way some of the things he thinks are suggested by the recent debate and discussion in this country about the subject of race.” He was referring not only to the Million Man March but to reactions to the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial, which frequently divided along racial lines.

*

Meanwhile, authorities in Washington are preparing for a demonstration whose dimensions can only be guessed at. March organizers predict a crowd of a million people; others expect a quarter that many. The largest single demonstration in Washington was a 1969 anti-war rally, which drew an estimated 600,000 protesters.

Regardless of the final number, thousands of buses will be arriving Sunday night and Monday morning, jamming access routes to the capital and taxing the city’s public transportation system.

The rally’s events are scheduled from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. EDT on Monday, but organizers are asking bus drivers to reach the city’s outskirts beginning after midnight to allow time to reach downtown and to maximize the disruption to the day’s normal business activities.

The District of Columbia and the federal government will permit workers to take personal holidays to attend the event or avoid the crowds.

Clinton’s approval of a day off for federal workers drew a bitter response from Larry Klayman, president of Judicial Watch, a nonprofit ethics monitoring group, who considers Farrakhan racist and anti-Semitic.

“Authorizing federal agencies to grant ‘liberal’ leave for employees to skip work to attend the march is not only an affront to the American taxpayer, and improper use of government resources, it constitutes tacit participation by Clinton in the march,” Klayman said. “This is the equivalent of President Clinton granting liberal leave so government employees could attend a police rally organized and led by Mark Fuhrman.”

Because the speaker’s platform for the rally will be on the west facade of the Capitol and the largest throngs are expected there, Congress is suspending all activities for the day.

The school board in Camden, N.J., canceled Monday classes because more than 250 of its 4,000 employees asked for the day off. In Philadelphia, school bus service was canceled for Monday because many of the district’s drivers will be attending the march. In Arlington, Va., school buses will run normally in the morning but bus service has been canceled in the afternoon.

March organizers have never before handled crowds of this size, and on Friday critical logistics questions remained unanswered, including where buses would park, how participants would get to the site, how many portable toilets would be available, and what first-aid and relief facilities would be provided.

District of Columbia police and federal authorities were working around the clock this weekend in anticipation of the mammoth gathering.

Farrakhan decreed that the march be all male, angering many women who consider his message of exclusion to be objectionable and perhaps fatal to his purposes.

Michele Wallace, a black professor of English and women’s studies at the City University of New York, said she and a number of other “progressive” black women--including 1960s radical Angela Davis--would organize events on Monday to express their displeasure with Farrakhan’s march.

“Farrakhan is responsible for galvanizing us; he left us no out,” said Wallace, who wrote a book called “Black Macho” about the psyche of the black male.

“I consider him regressive, reactionary, racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, separatist, nationalist, just really repugnant,” Wallace said. “I wouldn’t want to say on the record just how bad I think this is.”

She described the Nation of Islam as the “lunatic fringe” of American black society and said that Monday’s event was a cynical attempt by Farrakhan and Chavis to claim roles as broad-based black leaders.

*

Elected leaders were generally more circumspect in their approach to the march, seeing potential land mines on both sides of the issue.

Rep. Ronald V. Dellums (D-Oakland), one of the most senior black members of Congress, said that he would not be attending the rally because of a “schedule conflict.”

But he issued an ambiguous statement saying that he hoped that those marching would peacefully express their opposition to Republican policies and come together in “common cause” with men and women of all races.

Dellums’ five-paragraph statement did not mention Farrakhan’s name.