The October 15 rally was a 10th anniversary tribute to that 1995 event, which drew over 800,000 mostly Black men, according to a Boston University study.

The transit authority estimated that the 10-year commemoration drew nearly 150,000 people. As the 12 hours of speeches and musical performances played over large television screens down the length of the National Mall, those present alternated between listening to the program and mixing it up with others.

Most here were working people, overwhelmingly African-American. “People are trying to get together and find a way out of the situation we are in. Everyone knows things are screwed up but we don’t yet know how to change it,” said George Creamer, 26, a construction worker from southern New Jersey. “When we stop talking just about race and start talking about class, that’s when this movement will become really dangerous.”

“For me this is an opportunity for people to unify behind poor people who have been run out of their own state and own city for capitalistic greed,” said Darlene Jones, a New Orleans resident who lost her home in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and is currently living in a shelter in Chicago.

“We are telling people not to give their money to the Red Cross because we’re not seeing the money,” Jones said. The shelter’s residents have established their own fund, she explained, to distribute the monies equally among the residents.

A group of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) members leafleted to build support for the strike against Tyson in Alberta, Canada (see front-page article). “We only wish that more people could have attended the rally today,” said Don Cash, president of the UFCW Minority Coalition. “As we were rallying working people on strike against Tyson in Alberta are being beaten up and abused and refused their right to freedom of speech, freedom of association, and their right to organize.”

Joan Menzies carried a sign with a photo of her son, Rohammad, which read, “THE CRIME, being Black in America, THE PUNISHMENT, Life + 56 Years in Prison.” Framed up 14 years ago for armed robbery, her son received that sentence from a Virginia court. Menzies and her family were circulating a petition to demand he receive parole.

Speakers included scores of Democratic Party politicians, religious figures, artists, and academics. Russell Means from the American Indian Movement (AIM) spoke, calling for the release of framed-up AIM leader Leonard Peltier.

A videotaped message from Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba’s National Assembly, was part of the program. Alarcón pointed to the offer of the Cuban government to send 1,500 doctors to New Orleans to provide care to those affected by the hurricane. Washington refused.

Alarcón then mentioned the case of the Cuban Five—revolutionaries currently locked up in U.S. prisons on frame-up charges that include conspiracy to commit espionage for Havana. The convictions of the five were overturned by an appeals court in August, but they remain in prison. “They also fought for the African peoples,” Alarcón said. “They were in Angola fighting against apartheid.” Three of the five were among the hundreds of thousands of Cuban volunteers who answered the call to come to the defense of Angola when it was invaded by the racist South African regime in the 1970s and ’80s.

Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam and the initiator of the event, gave the closing speech. One of the central themes of his 80-minute speech was that capitalism is the road toward freedom from oppression for the Black nationality. “Suppose we pooled some of the money we spend foolishly,” he said. “We could set up factories in Africa and the Caribbean. That is a labor market that’s a little cheaper than labor here.… Africa can be a source of shoes and clothing and lots of things that we might not be able to make in America successfully.”  
 
 
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