MLK's Son Demands Racial Justice As Thousands Gather In DC On 'Dream' Speech Anniversary

WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th August, 2020) Thousands took to the streets of the US capital, Washington, DC, on Friday to protest for racial justice and draw a direct ancestry line to the Black Lives Matter movement from epic fights of the past against slavery and segregation.

The rally, timed to the 57th anniversary of the anti-segregation March on Washington, is held in front of of the Abraham Lincoln - the President who abolished slavery - Memorial, at an exact place where Martin Luther King delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963.

It comes three months since George Floyd's death under the knee of a police officer sparked a nationwide civil rights campaign and a day after President Donald Trump accepted the renomination, starting a final countdown to the election on November 3.

"In so many ways we stand together today in the symbolic shadow of the history, but we are making history together right now. We are marching with the largest and most active multigenerational and multiracial movement for civil rights since the 1960s," Martin Luther King's son, Martin Luther King III, told the audience.

"We are courageous, but conscious of our health. We are socially distanced, but spiritually united. We are masking our faces, but not our faith and freedom. We are taking our struggle to the streets and social media," he said. "The nation has never seen such a mighty modern-day incarnation of what my farther called a coalition of freedom."

The initial permit estimated a turnout of DC Solidarity March: "Get Your Knee Off Our Necks" at 100,000 people, but organizers have lower numbers and urged protesters from the localities with highest coronavirus rates to hold "satellite" rallies instead of traveling to Washington, DC, which mandates a 14-day quarantine for some visitors.

"We are tired of the mistreatment and the violence that we, as Black Americans, have been subjected to for hundreds of years," Al Sharpton, a march leading organizer, said. "Like those who marched before us, we are standing up and telling the police, telling lawmakers, telling the people and systems that have kept us down for years, 'Get your knee off our necks.'"

The march is led by those who "know the pain" with relatives of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin and other Afro-Americans killed by law enforcement officers addressing the audience.

"Black America, I hold you accountable. You must stand, you must fight, but not with violence and chaos. With self-love," said a sister of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man, shot in the back seven times by a policeman in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last Sunday,

The program started at 11.00 am with speeches at the Lincoln Memorial. Later protesters are expected to march to the Martin Luther King memorial nearby.

Organizers say that the march is planned as a peaceful one and to this end they cooperate with the authorities and employ marshals trained in "deescalation tactics."

"We... do not intend to engage in any civil disobedience. We expect all marchers to abide by all laws and any instruction of law enforcement," they urged.

Police in plain uniforms without conspicuous riot gear are seen patrolling adjacent streets, closed for traffic. No violent incidents have been seen so far.

The Black Lives Matter movement has become a major issue in the 2020 US Presidential campaign with the Democratic opposition seen as more sympathetic to protesters' demands while their Republican rivals, including Trump, prefer to focus on the need to counter an upsurge of violence which often tarnishes the movement.

Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, spoke to marchers in a recorded video. "If we work together to challenge every instinct our nation has to return to the status quo... we have an opportunity to make history, right here and right now," she said.

Speakers at the rally advocated electoral activism, urging everyone to vote "like we never voted before," use mail-in ballots and assist neighbors in coming to polling stations on election day.

"We need to raise our voices and cast our votes. Over the weeks ahead culminating on election day we need to vote as if our lives, our liberties, our livelihoods depend on it. Because they do," Martin Luther King III said.