Million Family March Advance Team Arrives

A group of religious leaders rode into downtown Washington on Friday in the first wave of buses headed to the nation’s capital for next month’s Million Family March, organizers said.

“We’re here to serve notice that the masses are on the way,” proclaimed Benjamin Muhammad, the march’s national director.

The Million Family March will take place Oct. 16, the fifth anniversary of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March.

Farrakhan has called for people of all races and religions to “rise above their symbols” and gather at the Mall in support of the American family. Muhammad, formerly known as Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. and a former executive director of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, helped organize the original march.

More than 100 pastors, imams and clerics from Washington met Friday in Arlington, Va., for a prayer breakfast sponsored by the American Clergy Leadership Conference. Then they boarded a bus for Washington.

While Muhammad said the march would be nonpolitical and nonpartisan, he called it “the largest gathering just before the national elections, so it will impact the outcome.”

Farrakhan has asked marchers to withhold their choice for president until the march. He hinted that he may endorse a candidate then.

Organizers would be willing to meet with any national candidate about making an appearance, Muhammad said.

“To the extent these candidates now focus on families is the extent they may get the attention of the millions of families who are participating in the Million Family March,” he said.

On Tuesday, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph I. Lieberman, the first Jewish politician to run on a major-party ticket, told American Urban Radio Networks he was open to meeting Farrakhan to promote reconciliation in the United States.

The Muslim leader campaigns for black empowerment but has drawn criticism for statements against whites and Jews. He once called Judaism a “gutter religion.”