Police get ready for battlefield KKK rally (Gettysburg)

[Penndems]

Friday, September 01, 2006
BY T.W. BURGER
Of Our Carlisle Bureau

GETTYSBURG - Local, state and federal law enforcement agencies are gearing up for a planned rally of a white supremacist group at one of the nation's most famous battlefields from 1 to 4 p.m. tomorrow. Three counterdemonstrations are planned for the same time period.

The World Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, based in Sharpsburg, Md., obtained a permit to hold a demonstration on the lawn of the Cyclorama Center at the Gettysburg National Military Park, park spokeswoman Katie Lawhon said.

<snip>

During the KKK rally, the 37th Texas Cavalry, a Confederate re-enactment group, will form ranks dressed in Confederate uniforms and turn their backs on the Klan. Leaders of the group said they object to the Klan's habit of linking their views with Confederate soldiers.

At the Pitzer Woods amphitheater, in another part of the national park, representatives of the national Sons of Confederate Veterans organization will also object to the Klan's identifying itself with the Confederacy. In Gettysburg Borough's Rec Park, churches and other groups will hold a Unity Day rally.
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Link:
http://www.pennlive.com/news/patriotnews/index.ssf?/base/news/1157076606240700.xml&coll=1

[gaspee]

1. I had no idea

That you could get a permit for a protest in a national park.

[Penndems]

2. Neither did I, until I read this article

Not sure when the policy changed, or if there even was one in place.

[ComerPerro]

4. If that's the case, we should have a protest / National DU Meetup there

at Gettysburg.

It is beautiful.

[Virginia Dare]

18. The National Mall is on park land...

and you can get a permit there.

[ComerPerro]

3. the racist fucks should line up on Seminary ridge, like they did in 1863

And if this guy wants to object to the Klan identifying with the confederacy, maybe he should check his history first.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. Eh.

I can understand why a group of Civil War enthusiasts would want to seperate themselves from the Klan.

[ComerPerro]

7. Confederacy had some very similar mentalities, no denying that

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

9. Of course.

But one can be an enthusiast without being a KKK apologist.

I like building model airplanes, including Luftwaffe stuff. If the neo-nazis showed up when I went down to the hobby store to get some glue, I'd be rather upset too.

[ComerPerro]

10. so this organization is trying to deny the racist roots of the past?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. Seems to me...

by turning their backs they're tryping to deny any racist connection in the present.

[ComerPerro]

13. Why would they even show up? Its not like the KKK is

trying to establish any connection to the present organization.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. Because the KKK is desecrating a historical site.

Sounds to me like they're trying to imitate those bikers who show up at the funerals that Fred Phelps protests.

Imagine, if you will, neo-Nazis holding rallies at those beaches in Normandy.

[ComerPerro]

15. yeah, people getting in when its too late, just like the bikers

ever notice that nobody seemed to give a fuck when Phelps was carrying "fags burn in hell" signs at funerals of AIDS victims?

Where was the patriot guard then?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

16. I noticed.

But I'm not going to hold it against them.

[Nevernose]

25. Those "racist roots" grow on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line too

If you want to hold up some white people who actually fought for black people, with no other motivations, then perhaps you should look at the Freedom Riders or the early abolitionists. Minnesota had more Klan members than any Southern state ever had; more African slaves were "imported" through Boston than any other American city, including Southern ones; the Dept of Education under Clinton produced studies that showed that the most severe school segregation was in the North.

I'm not so much defending the South as saying that there's plenty of guilt to go around. History's not so cut-and-dried.

I think we should laud ANYONE willing to drive out to Pennsylvania and show those neo-Nazi, KKK, inbreeding sonsofbitches to go straight to hell, and not worry about what their hobbies and interests are.

[Virginia Dare]

19. There was lots of racism among Union soldiers too..

there was plenty of racism to go around back then. Confederate re-enactors have nothing to do with the KKK for the most part, it's about preserving history, and I guess they want to show that. I applaud them for it.

[ComerPerro]

20. Yeah, cause going against the KKK in the north is such a bold action

[Virginia Dare]

21. Has the KKK shown up on any southern battlefields?

I don't know, I'm just asking. I don't really see why it's relevant though.
I'm thinking this is a sincere action on their part, but we might have a difference of opinion there.

[Yupster]

6. The SCV Organization

is whenever possible on hand to protest the Klan. They feel like the Klan has stolen their flag.

I was friends with the SCV general in our area until he was killed in a car crash and he hated the Klan worse than anyone I've ever met.

[civildisoBDence]

8. Fukkk the KKK

This is from a descendent of Confederate soldiers and the namesake of one who was mortally wounded at Second Manassas in 1863.

One reason Democrats do so poorly in the South is that the far left uses us as their whipping boys. Bigotry is wrong whether it's based on race, class, or region.

[Howardx]

17. the far left eh?

what are you?

[seabeyond]

11. SMALL group. they were in amarillo in beginning aug

at first there was a lot of outrage. in researching,.... a small group going town to town, like 17-20. wussy group. trying to stir. they get way more demonstrating against them, hence the troubles and publicity. here, the black group decided to hold a party else..... giving them NO recognition.

[KamaAina]

22. "But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- "

"we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow —- this ground." -Abraham Lincoln, one of two or three decent repuke Presidents, Nov. 19, 1863.

Unfortunately, the Klan will now apparently be allowed to desecrate it. :grr:

[billbuckhead]

23. The old South had it's chance at Gettysburg and they didn't measure up

Reading Karl Marx's fabled blow by blow commentary of the US civil war makes a damning point that it wasn't as close as we're taught in school. Check out this excerpt from Nov 14, 1862. It seems the Confederate fascists were already losing the taste for war.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thus, the State of Georgia has forbidden conscription within its borders, and the Confederate government did not dare to revoke the prohibition.

Similar friction occurred in Virginia between the “individual state” and the “league of individual states”. The source of the dispute is the refusal of the state government to grant the agents of Mr. Jefferson Davis the right to conscript the militiamen of Virginia and enrol them in the Confederate army. The incident led to an exchange of caustic letters between the Secretary of War and General J. B. Floyd, the notorious character who as Secretary of War of the Union under President Buchanan prepared the secession and in the process managed to “secede” notable portions of the Treasury funds into his private coffers. This chief of the secession, known in the North as “Floyd the thief”, now appears as the champion of the rights of Virginia as against the Confederacy. The Richmond Examiner comments, among other things, on the correspondence between Floyd and the Secretary of War:

“The entire correspondence is a good illustration of the resistance and hostility that our state (Virginia) and its army have to suffer at the hands of those who abuse the power of the Confederacy in Richmond. Virginia has been plagued with endless burdens. But everything has limits, and the state will no longer tolerate the repetition of injustice.... Virginia supplied almost all the arms ammunition and military supplies that won the battles of Bethel and Manassas. It gave the Confederate service, out of its own armouries and arsenals, 75,000 rifles and muskets, 233 pieces of artillery and a magnificent arms factory. Its manpower capable of bearing arms has been drained to the dregs in the service of the Confederacy; it had to drive the enemy from its western frontier unaided, and is it not a cause for indignation if the creatures of the Confederate government now dare to make sport of it?”

In Texas, too, the repeated drawing-off of its adult male population to the east has aroused antagonism towards the Confederacy. On September 30, Mr. Oldham, the Texas representative, protested to the Congress in Richmond:

“In the wild-goose expedition of Sibley, 3,500 picked troops were sent out from Texas to perish in the and plains of New Mexico. The result was to bring the enemy to our borders, which he will cross in the winter. You have transported Texas best troops cast of the Mississippi, dragged them to Virginia, used them at the points of greatest danger, where they were decimated. Three-fourths of every Texas regiment sleep in the grave or have had to be discharged because of illness. If this government continues to draw the able-bodied men out of Texas in this manner in order to keep those regiments up to normal strength, Texas will be ruined, irrevocably ruined. This is unjust and impolitic. My constituents have families, property and their homeland to defend. I protest in their name against transporting men from west of the Mississippi to the east and thus laying their own country open to invasion by enemies from the north, east, west and south.”

Two things emerge from the foregoing quotations taken from Southern journals. The coercive measures of the Confederate government to swell the ranks of the army have gone too far. The military resources are giving out. Secondly, and this is even more decisive, the doctrine of the “states’ rights”, (the sovereignty of states) with which the usurpers in Richmond gave the secession a constitutional colouring, is already beginning to turn against itself. That is how little Mr. Jefferson Davis has succeeded in “making a nation of the South”, as his English admirer Gladstone boasted.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1862/11/14.htm>

[Yupster]

26. Kind of silly when you look at the numbers

that of the approx. 1 million adult white men in the south before the war, about 250,000 of them died in the war and another 250,000 of them were wounded.

They must have stuck together pretty well. They sure accepted losses far greater than any other war in history and kept on fighting.

It was a large problem for the Confederate government throughout though trying to organize a war effort in a country founded on the theory of states' rights.

I think Davis is much maligned, but he did about as well as anyone could.

[billbuckhead]

27. Francisco Franco, Hitler, Stalin and Mao all did a lot better than Davis

They won. (Well at least Hitler did for awhile, at least as long as Napoleon did). The Confederacy hardly won a battle outside Dixie.

Why can't Americans get it through their heads that the Confederacy were the bad guys and killed more Americans than King George, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Napoleon, Ho Chi Minh and Osama Bin Forgotten all put together?

[Yupster]

28. I don't think Davis would trade

historical places with any of the figures you mentioned. Maybe victory sometimes carry a greater price than you're willing to pay.

[billbuckhead]

29. Davis was condemning a third of his population to slavery and genocide

What more price would you pay? Even apartheid South Africa wouldn't pay that price.

[Yupster]

30. Genocide?

Against whom?

The population of African-Americans went up every year in the south right up through the Civil War. In some southern states there were more African-Americans than Caucasian-Americans.

[derby378]

24. Message for the KKK - Gen. Robert E. Lee was an ABOLITIONIST

Just thought y'all would like to know that little tidbit. The only reason Lee sided with the Confederates was because he was loyal to his home state of Virginia and would never attack it with any military force.