Klan rally brings counterprotest

In most settings, it would have been a politically-incorrect joke.

But when a white supremacist speaker took the stand at the White Unity Rally Saturday in Raleigh, he was completely serious.

 

"My four-year old nephew once asked me if Mexico had an Olympic team. I said, No they don't,' and he asked why, and I answered,Because anyone who knows how to swim is already over here,'" he said against a background of colonial, Confederate and Nazi flags.

 

That speaker was one of 30 area members of white supremacy groups-including America's neo-Nazi organization and the Ku Klux Klan-who joined together in hopes of forming a "United Front of White Racialists." The small core met with resistance from an estimated 500 protesters.

 

Most striking to many of the protesters was the profusion of Nazi flags: a black swastika within a white circle on a red background. But more than the Nazi symbols or the Klansmen's' ritual clothing, the protesters themselves commanded observers' attention, largely through signs and shouted slogans.

 

"We have homeland terrorism right here," junior Emma Boa-Durgammah said of the rally. She mobilized a small group of Duke students after coming across a website for the rally, and estimated the presence of 50 Duke students among the protesters.

 

"It seems so obvious why you would be here to resist Nazis," said Diane Nelson, associate professor of cultural anthropology, who came across the Duke students in the crowd. "What the protesters are showing is that they reject racism. There are white people, brown people, black people and Asian people-there's a wholesale resistance of this aspect of hate."

 

Protesters advocated a wider range of causes than anti-racism.

Matt Joyner, a 22-year-old former student of North Carolina State University, came to the protest as a member of both Food Not Bombs and Klowns Against Klan Action, or KAKA. Dressed in a rainbow wig, red foam nose and brightly-colored, mismatched clothing, Joyner distributed "racial unity sandwiches" to bring attention to the problem of hunger in the Triangle area while protesting white supremacist rhetoric. "It's white and wheat bread together," Joyner explained.

 

But most visible were the anarchists, a fundamentally disorganized but practically cohesive group of predominantly young and politically disillusioned activists. Identifiable by their bandanna-covered faces, the anarchists tested police limits by pushing their way into the street.

 

One anarchist led a contingent under a large, homemade black flag. Wearing a camouflage shirt with a drawing of a burning American flag melting into a pool of blood and a bandanna that covered most of his face, the 20-year-old former University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student initially identified himself only as "Charles in Charge" but later gave his name as Neal.

 

"I came here to try and prevent the Nazis from being able to speak, and if given the chance, to beat the s--t out of some Nazis," Neal said. "As it turns out, cops are like Nazis on salary, so it looks like I'm here to fight cops so I can fight Nazis, so I can go home and spend the rest of my life in relative $190-rent poverty."

 

Law enforcement officers maintained a perimeter guard on all sides of the rally in order to prevent violence against the rally participants. No police officers were willing or permitted to speak to the press.

"I can understand that they need to keep a level of security, but at the same time it's a little much," Boa-Durgammah said.

 

One protester with a microphone was less accepting of the officers' role. Michael, who refused to offer his last name and would only say that he came from "the planet Earth," appealed to the police forces as a third-generation veteran of the United States Armed Forces.

 

"You stand here and you protect these people?" he questioned the police. "If you believe in the badges that you wear and the country that you live in, why don't you turn around and face them? They are the ones preaching hate, they are the ones who lynched black people-turn around, face them, face the hate!"

 

Other protesters who were less vocal had followed a moral instinct to the rally. "I just got off work and heard what's going on," said Sarah Howell, 21, of Raleigh. "It's important that we let them know that they're not appreciated in Raleigh-we don't want them here."

 

Some community members and passersby criticized the protesters for feeding into the KKK and Nazi play for attention.

 

"When you have a few people and a group coming out to do a rally, you really do have to come put forward your opinion," Boa-Durgammah said in response to this concern. "Especially if you're going to get upset at any little thing in The Chronicle, you should definitely be here and backing up what it is you believe."