Report from a correspondent in Memphis
May 17, 2013
“The truth is like a lion.
You don’t have to defend it.
Let it loose. It will defend itself.”
– St. Augustine
Dear Comrades,
This past February the Ku Klux Klan announced that they would be holding a rally in Memphis on March 30. A controversy erupted in the activist community over what kind of response was appropriate. Some groups, prominent among them the Midsouth Peace and Justice Center (MSPJC), joined the City of Memphis in trying to draw people away from a counter protest. For a full account of organizational efforts on both sides, please read my previous post. What follows is an accounting of our counter protest and a brief response to criticisms.
At 12:30 on March 30, about fifty of us gathered in the gazebo at Court Square within close walking distance of the six block area that the City of Memphis had cordoned off to protect the Klan. Every imaginable stripe of the revolutionary left was represented. In attendance were Socialist Alternative, the Greater Kansas City Industrial Workers of the World, and no doubt many other organizations who should be commended for the sacrifices they had already made to come to Memphis and were prepared to make that day. We were answering a call to action by The Ida B. Wells Coalition Against Police Brutality and Racism. We would be joining over a thousand people in directly protesting the Klan’s presence despite the attempts by the City of Memphis and some local political activists to dissuade us.
When I heard about the Klan’s intention to stage a rally in Memphis I began attending meetings for an organized resistance. What I observed is the substance of my previous post: the attempted sabotage of a working class fight back against southern Fascism. I exposed these efforts because I saw that unless someone put the truth in plain sight the working class would have no chance to learn from this experience, and could be led to catastrophic passivity in the face of a racist terrorist group. Without the moral support and consultation of the League for the Revolutionary Party my work would not have been possible, and I cannot recommend them highly enough for education and counsel.
I was proud to have been accepted into the planning committee of the Ida B. Wells Coalition for a direct confrontation with the Klan. Our plan was to march down to the entry point of the cordon, and decide from there if we wanted to go inside. We entered the police cordon in view of the fact that people were already inside, some of whom could have shown up in response to flyers we had passed out.
1200 people went downtown in the cold rain on March 30 in Memphis TN, ready to face the Klan, ready for the worst of police brutality. The world should remember that. The City of Memphis’ organized distraction from the struggle with Fascism had an attendance of 1500. Some fraction of that attended Memphis United’s attempt to talk about racism instead of facing it downtown. If a very small number of people came downtown to root for the Klan, they didn’t make their presence known. The vast majority of the people downtown chanted: “The Cops and Klan work hand in hand.”
The event was nevertheless not an unqualified success. (1) The Klan was not denied the ability to advocate racist terror in public. (2) The masses were confronting and rejecting Fascism for the most part spontaneously, i.e. in the absence of organized leadership. (3) While some individual union members came out to protest, not one union mobilized its members to stop the Klan, despite the fact that organized workers are historically targets of the Klan’s terror. Not one union supported our action publicly. Not one union used their resources to help build a stronger action.
Across town Memphis United was having a consciousness raising event about racism. Again and again, its organizers had repeated the mantra that the people of Memphis didn’t want to confront the Klan. That idea proved false in the event. Previously on this blog I documented their attempts to sabotage the anti-Klan movement. The response from them was aggressive, personal and viscous, but its substance boiled down to the accusation that the article was a complete lie.
If it’s not true that the MSPJC was actively trying to keep people from going downtown to confront the Klan, then why is Brad Watkins, Organizing Directer at the MSPJC, telling the readership of the Tri-Star Defender: “I personally don’t propose that people go to the KKK event and counter protest.”
Ignoring the Klan doesn’t weaken them one bit: they get media attention whether there is a counter protest or not. To the contrary, facing them empowers workers, and not facing them gives the Klan a level of social acceptance. Did the MSPJC action weaken the anti-Fascist movement? Yes undoubtedly. Did they intend to do that? Maybe not. But if they didn’t intend to do that, then why is that what they did? Why did they consistently, in meeting after meeting, support moving their event further and further away from downtown, even overturning a previous decision to rally at the former Nathan Bedford Forrest Park in an “emergency meeting” so that instead their event would be folded into the City of Memphis’ event at the Fairgrounds whose stated purpose was to distract people away from the unseemly spectacle of persistent southern racism?
As an aside, I know that Jacob Flowers, the Executive Director of MSPJC, advised the police about crowd control for the event, because Jacob Flowers told me so. I understand that he is denying the fact, and so it is his word against mine. You can believe what you want about that, but note that they never claimed that talking to the police in this way was against their principles. What’s more, when we arrived downtown to confront the Klan, we found two lines of barricades, just exactly the way Jacob Flowers told me he had suggested the police set things up.
The MSPJC may be tolerant of the Klan, but they are not tolerant of criticism from their left. They may seek to reconcile the police to the community they terrorize, but it is doubtful they will reconcile with me for having lifted a critical voice.
Despite the disarray of Memphis’ left, and the perfidy of certain liberal groups, the people of Memphis displayed real courage and fighting spirit in the face of a mounting Fascist menace. It is my sincere hope that in the days, weeks, months and years to come that the revolutionary working class leadership those brave people deserve will bring itself forth. Anyone who passed before that gauntlet of police in riot gear, who stood in the rain beneath the steely gaze of snipers and dared, completely unarmed, to taunt the paid stooges of reaction, deserves as much.
Comradely,
Workingclassfightbackmemphis