THE LATEST TWO MINUTE HATE RALLY: ISLAMOPHOBES IN LOWER MANHATTAN

Three months ago, the neo-cons decided they needed to attack the Latino community with Arizona’s SB 1070 law. Then they tried to attack African Americans by going after Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod by painting her as a racist. They also went after the gay community by fighting to preserve the anti-same-sex marriage Prop. 8 in California. Now they are turning up the heat on their anti-Arab/Muslim bigotry by trying to keep mosques and Islamic center from being built across the country, most notably Park 51, which is slated to break ground next year near the site of the World Trade Center in New York. All of these attempts have been met with an opposition that has successfully blocked those efforts, but that is not stopping them from pushing the most shrill and divisisive rhetoric and actions into the mainstream. That brings us to the Hate Islam rally that took place this Sunday in Lower Manhattan. All this time the narrative has been that those opposed to Park 51 simply wants those building it to respect the sensitivities of the families of those killed in 9/11 and move the center. You know, the same way that we were to respect the sensitivites of those who are victims of crime in the city. We saw what that got us: Blacks and Latinos demonized as criminals. This time it is those who practice Islam are demonized as terrorists. Well, if you thought that was sensitivity was the order of the day before this rally, you most certainly cannot say it afterwards, not with speakers who go so far as to disparage Muslims as not even participating in the Revolutionary War (they did), attendees going after a man walking through the crowd they just simply decided to call a Muslim (he wasn’t – as he told them several times), and – just to drive the point home – several people wearing Confederate Flag shirts, like the one in this picture second from the left holding a sign saying the “Mosqueraid is over”.  Another one of these rallies takes place on Sept. 11, but after this one we’re not sure if anyone would want to be associated with this crowd of idiots. Even Atlas Shrugs Pamela Geller disassociated herself from those idiots, and that’s saying something. Despite a rather serious disagreement with her, we hope that she continues to do so and call these people out for the bigots they are. We will have video from this rally later in the week (the one that shows the crowd trying to attack the man they pretended to be Muslim is here after the jump), but for now here is our report. One more thing to the neo-cons: What does it take for you to get that playing Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” at things like this makes you look stupid? Yes, folks, they did that crap again!

One People’s Project

NEW YORK, NY–At Sunday’s rally against the proposed Islamic Center near the World Trade Center site, the usual obligatory speaker of color was also on hand to help deflect the charges of racism that those opponents had to field over the past few months. After the remarks of Sudanese human rights activist and ex-child slave Simon Deng, whom was termed a “former slave of Islam”, former New York firefighter Tim Brown asked the assembled “How many people think that guy is a racist? Do you think he’s a bigot? That’s what they’re trying to brand him!”

But the racism was more than apparent when a video from the rally was uploaded to YouTube. In the video, a dark-skinned man walked through the crowd, who began to chant “NO MOSQUE HERE” and “Run away, coward!” at him. Not exactly running away, the man turns around, perturbed. “Y’all motherfuckers don’t know my opinion about shit!” The man was actually a union carpenter working to rebuild the World Trade Center site and, as he noted on the video several times, not a Muslim – although one person decided to also opine that he must have voted for Obama, which was also not apparent.

It was enough for even Pamela Geller, who organized the last such rally on June 6 to fire off an angry missive on her blog Atlas Shrugs directed at those who put this one together. “Clearly, whoever organized this was careless, unprepared, shooting from the hip and harmful to the cause of freedom and compassion,” she wrote, later suggesting that what she called a “half-assed effort” was so detrimental to those opposed to the Center’s construction, that it was as if Sharif El-Gamal, the Center’s developer, organized the rally himself.

Regardless, hundreds of protesters convened in Lower Manhattan near the site of Park 51, the proposed Islamic center in an effort to prevent it from even being built, and despite the suggestion that they were not bigots but simply those that were respecting the sensitivities of those that died on Sept. 11, 2001, speaker after speaker made it clear that their issue was with the practice of Islam altogether.

Tim Brown and Andrew Sullivan, a construction worker attempting to organize a group of fellow workers pledging not to work on building Park 51, maintained the accepted narrative, but Debra Burlingame, co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Secure America made it clear that the existence of the center would not be acceptable to her at all.

“One of the most irritating question I am asked again and again and again by the media is this one: ‘How far is far enough away?” she said. “When it comes to this Imam, there isn’t a place far enough!” This plays up to the demonization of Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, who is building Park 51, as a terrorist sympathizer. Ironically, 9/11 Families for a Secure America boasts among its more prominent members Daniel Smeriglio the co-founder of the anti-immigration group Voice of the People USA, and someone with such close ties to neo-Nazi organizations that other anti-immigration groups have distanced themselves from him.

Other speakers with dubious histories also took to the stage, particularly with histories attacking the establishment of Islamic-based institutions far enough away from Lower Manhattan. Rally organizer Beth Gillinsky from the Coalition to Honor Ground Zero and the Jewish Action Alliance has made a name for herself attacking Black and Arab communities under the guise of fighting anti-Semitism, and in 2007 she along with Pamela Geller failed in their attempt to prevent the first English-Arabic public school in the country to be built in Brooklyn via another organization called the Stop the Madrassa Community Coalition. Gillinsky announced a “bold and new citizen army, a stateside fighting force of We the People”.

Lobbyist Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy was also on had to speak. In the past he has declared Iraq dictator Sadaam Hussein was “involved with the people who perpetrated both the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and even the Oklahoma City bombing,” advanced the notion that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the US and also wants to impose Sharia Law on the country, with his Jewish Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan as part of a secret conspiracy. His remarks at the rally spoke to a perceived “penetration of our elites by the Muslim Brotherhood and its influence operations, starting from the White House.”

The most incendiary comments came from Laurie Cardoza-Moore of the anti-Islam organization Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, a group working to prevent an Islamic Center from being built in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. She declared to the crowd that that it was likely that a portrait of Osama bin Laden will overlook New York on the 13th floor of the finished Center and that “nothing of the Islamic faith was part of the founding of thi
s nation.”

“Here’s a test. How many Muslims signed the Declaration of Independence?” she asked. “Or the Constitution? How many Muslims fought in our Revolutionary War for Independence? How many Muslims financially supported the birth of this nation? Zero, that’s right!”

In truth, Muslims were in the New World centuries before the first colony, and in the 1700s many of those came here in bondage on American ships to be slave. Cardoza-Moore also was incorrect about Muslims fighting in the Revolutionary War. According to a 2007 article found on America.gov, two war veterans of Muslim decent, Peter Salem and Salem Poor have even been on depicted on US Postage stamps. Peter Salem is credited for killing British Major John Pitcairn at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Other records note that there were at least six persons with Islamic names who served in the Revolutionary War. Cardoza-Moore would go on to blame Muslims for the slave trade America participated in and suggest that in skirmishes with the Barbary Pirates in the late 18th Century, Muslims were the first ones that America fought in war.

A counterdemonstration was held a block away on Church and Warren which brought out hundreds, including several members of local Anti-Racist Action chapters, critical of those who they felt were infringing on religious freedom. Some did indeed made their way to the hate rally, and although a few scuffles took place there were no arrests. Meanwhile, the block where the old Burlington Coat Factory is located and the site of Park 51 was blocked off by police, preventing protestors from both sides from assembling there, but the building was opened for those Muslims wishing to come and pray.

Another rally is scheduled to take place on Sept. 11 organized by Pamela Geller and will include racist blogger Andrew Breitbart and Dutch politician Geert Wilders, currently banned from the United Kingdom for his activities against Arab/Muslim people and calls to ban the Koran in the Netherlands as well as imposing taxes on anyone wearing headscarves. Also on that day, the Dove World Outreach Center, a church with ties the to anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church plans a “Burn the Koran Day” in Gainesville, Florida. Both are expected to attract massive counterdemonstrations. It is not known if Geller will include anyone associated with the most recent rally.

Report from Mondoweiss. By the way, in a picture found with this article there’s a guy wearing a US Flag as a cape and a JDL T-Shirt. Lord knows we wish we saw this clown. If anyone knows who he is feel free to let us know by dropping us a line.