Top U.S. civil rights leaders accuse Beck of hijacking Dr. King's legacy, plan 8/28 counter-rally

[meegbear]

Some of the nation's top civil rights leaders are angrily accusing right-wing media star Glenn Beck of "hijacking" the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech by planning to rally his conservative forces at the same Lincoln Memorial site on the anniversary date of Aug. 28 -- and so they are planning a counter-rally and march of their own.

"Beck is hijacking the imagery and symbolism of August 28 and the Lincoln Memorial to promote an agenda of intolerance," said Marc H. Morial, the former New Orleans mayor who is now president and CEO of the National Urban League, one of the counter-rally organizers, said earlier tonight in a telephone interview.

The Morial-led Urban League is teaming with well-known activists such as the Rev. Al Sharpton and his National Action Network in planning a "mass rally" and march that will begin at a high school in Northeast Washington. Morial said that one of King's surviving children, Martin Luther King III, is also on board. Less than three miles away, the Fox News Channel host and former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin are headlining a heavily promoted rally called "Restoring Honor."

Morial said in the phone interview that civil rights leaders believe that "Beck is deliberately trying to poke a stick in our eye, or kick sand in our faces" by holding the rally on the 47th anniversary and at the spot of King's most famous speech, at a massive rally to lobby support for what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that ended legal segregation in America.

Beck claimed earlier this month on his radio show that one of his goals is to "reclaim the civil right movement," saying that it should be about individual liberties and not social justice or supporting undocumented immigration, which he called "modern day slavery." But as Beck's popularity has risen since launching his Fox News program the same week that Barack Obama became the nation's first African-American president -- angering many with attacks linking Obama to socialism or communism and also triggering outrage with his comment that the president has "a deep-seated hatred for white people."

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http://mediamatters.org/blog/201006220064

[el_bryanto]

1. This should be interesting

A bit skeevy on Beck's part, I'd say.

Bryant