Violence Ends Youth Rally in New York

What was billed as a Million Youth March drew only a few thousand people to a rally in Harlem that ended violently Saturday after Khallid Abdul Muhammad, the event’s organizer, delivered a racially charged speech attacking the police.

Muhammad told members of the audience that if they were set upon, they should try to seize police officers’ guns and turn them against the police. At the same time, some of his followers urged the crowd to leave peacefully.

About 4 p.m. EDT, the court-designated time for the rally to end, a police helicopter flew low over the crowd. Officers in riot gear moved in. Police turned off the generator running the sound system, and bottles and chairs flew.

About 20 people, including 15 police officers, were injured in a series of brief clashes.

“When it got to 4:01 it was over,” said an obviously angered Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. “This was a hate march. I said it in advance it was a hate march . . . and then at the very end Khallid Muhammad invited and asked people to attack the police.

“The march was a pathetic failure,” Giuliani charged, estimating the turnout at 6,000 people. “Free speech does not allow you to incite to riot. What he did was totally illegal.”

State Sen. David A. Paterson, who represents Harlem, said Muhammad should be taken into custody.

“He certainly should be held in contempt and probably arrested for exhorting young people to violence while he runs away,” Paterson said.

Even before the noon rally started, more than 3,000 officers, including police on motorcycles and horses, waited on nearby streets. Community affairs officers in distinctive light blue shirts stood alongside the stage set up in the middle of Malcolm X Boulevard.

The crowd filled about five blocks and was sparse toward the rear of the march. The event’s organizers, who said 50,000 had been expected, did not provide an estimate of the number in attendance.

Much of the rhetoric, punctuated by shouts of “Black Power!”, was noncontroversial--urging young people to attend school, stay off drugs, cease gang violence, strengthen families and communities--until Muhammad rose to be the last speaker.

The official time for the rally to end was fast approaching.

“Are we going to let them bastards shut it down?” asked Muhammad, who was dismissed as an aide to Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan after a 1994 speech attacking Jews, Pope John Paul II, homosexuals and whites.

“The Jews are the bloodsuckers of the black community,” he charged before turning his wrath on the huge police presence.

“You no-good bastards,” Muhammad said of the police. “Giuliani, you have sent your troops. We have a right, a God-given right, a constitutional right to defend ourselves against anyone who attacks us.”

“Beat the hell out of them with the railing if they so much as touch you!” Muhammad shouted. “Look the bastards in the eye. Take their guns and use it on them.”

From the time negotiations for a permit began months ago, the event posed a threat to Giuliani’s second-term theme of a kinder and more orderly New York.

The mayor’s efforts to ban the march were overturned in courts, which limited the hours and scope of the march.

The day before the rally, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith took out ads in New York newspapers.

The advertisements showed a photo of Muhammad leading followers armed with rifles and was captioned: “Armed. Dangerous. And filled with hate.”

“This weekend, a hatemonger will lead a march in Harlem,” the ad charged. “This is a sad day for Harlem, for all New Yorkers, and, indeed, for all Americans.

“Stay away. Don’t be taken in. These are hatemongers who are spreading poison. They are using you.”

Some people attending the rally did not see themselves as militants.

“It’s just a whole group of people finally coming together . . . the children have been so separated. The parents are doing one thing. All generations are doing different things. For them to come together as one is a beautiful thing,” said Karen Smith, a branch manager of a bank, who traveled to the rally from Brooklyn.

Before the march, Muhammad refused to honor a request from Paterson that speakers refrain from anti-white rhetoric.