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Rally Slated for Saturday, November 9, at Liberty Memorial

On November 9 at 3:00 p.m. at Kansas City’s Liberty Memorial, a wide variety of civil rights and human rights organizations, city officials and concerned individuals will gather to say No! to the National Socialist Movement and Yes! to human rights.

The National Socialist Movement and whatever friends they can gather up are coming to the Kansas City are for a weekend of private sessions on national socialist ideology, a public rally in the center of downtown Kansas City, Missouri and then a nighttime swastika burning on private land, an affair somewhat like a Klan cross burning.  Unlike other white nationalists, like those who attend American Renaissance conferences, the 50-to-100 neo-Nazis who rally during the day will hope for some conflict on the streets—it is what helps them gather new members.  The nighttime swastika-burning, however, is likely to draw more racists to it than the daytime rally.

Conscious of the neo-Nazis need for street conflict, organizers of the Liberty Memorial event are planning a non-violent, non-confrontation rally, a place where people of all types can gather.  They are also aware that the day is the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, and they will remember those who died, were burnt out of their homes and shops, and shuffled off to concentration camps.  Their event is at the same time as the neo-Nazi rally downtown.  It follows in the spirit of the city council members of the City of Kansas City, Missouri, who last Thursday passed a resolution opposing and rejecting the National Socialist Movement and its ideology.

Leonard Zeskind

Author Leonard Zeskind

is founder of IREHR. For almost four decades, he has been a leading authority on white nationalist political and social movements. He is the author of Blood and Politics: The History of White Nationalism from the Margins to the Mainstream, published by Farrar Straus & Giroux in May 2009. [more..]

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