Million Youth March

[Christopher Niles]

I briefly visited the Atlanta headquarters for the Million Youth March in 
mid-July. I came away with the sense that the MYM is a sloppily organized 
front for the Nation of Islam. I suspect that the key to understanding a 
lot of the conflicting messages that MYM people are sending is 
Farrakhan's obvious desire for a broader base of support. The event 
organizers that I met consisted of NOI members, NOI sympathizers and 
fuzzy black solidarity types. They seemed to be quite keen to pimp the 
march as a very diverse one, although most of the organizing is clearly 
aimed at Black youth. Whatever the matter, the event promises, 
unfortunately, to be a fairly silly affair.

It might actually be the case that the New York MYM has nothing to do 
with the Atlanta MYM. Certainly, the group of Black youth who were 
meeting about the march at the Black Radical Congress in June were cut 
from a significantly more sophisticated idealogical cloth than their 
counterparts in Atlanta. Also, several people I know seem to be under the 
impression that both marches not only have nothing to do with each other 
but that their respective organizers are hostile to each other...still, 
nobody seems to really know what's up.

Chris Niles
DC New Abolitionists