Upper Perk defensemen Travis Kline, Owen Leister and Aidan Schaffer make a stop on the Quakertown runningback at the goal line in the first game of the season last Friday night at Upper Perk.
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As Americans prepare to remember the twelfth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, people have begun to gather in Manhattan, N.Y., Washington D.C. and Shanksville, Pa. They will remember the people who died that day and the heroic efforts of those who saved countless others from a fiery death in the aftermath.
But there is another event scheduled for Sept. 11, 2013 that seems to be a poke in the eye to every American who wishes to honor and remember Sept. 11, 2001 as a solemn date.
The American Muslim Political Action Committee (AMPAC) is planning a “Million Muslim March” on the day that over 3,000 Americans were murdered in 2001. According to an item in “US News & World Report” and published on the American Muslim website (the americanmuslim.org), AMPAC is hosting what it hopes will be a gathering of one million people in Washington, D.C. on the 12th anniversary of 9/11 to urge the government to reveal “the truth” about the attacks.
March organizer Ira Hodge was reported to have said, “We want to hold President Obama accountable for his empty promises of creating a transparent government…What exactly have we spent all our money, lost lives and taken lives for? The entire record of the 9/11 Commission has never been released.”
Protesters will also denounce “FBI traps,” “illegal tapping and surveiling [sic] of Muslim Americans” and “media propaganda making the word terrorist synonymous with Muslim.”
The march was announced as the “Million Muslim March” earlier this year, but its name has since been changed to the “Million American March Against Fear.”
To make this event even stranger, the item goes on to report that north-central Pennsylvania’s Williamsport Tea Party has joined with planners, in addition to groups that adhere to conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks or oppose the National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes the president to approve indefinite detentions.
Most Americans believe in the right of any group to peacefully gather to exercise their freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or to petition the government for a redress of grievances; after all those guarantees appear in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
But to try and bring together a mass of conspiracy theorists together on the day a nation remembers over 3,000 who died in the attacks 12 years ago just doesn’t seem like a good way to drum up public support for your beliefs.
Will the number of people who support the conspiracy theory grow because of the march or will the groups organizing the event face scorn because of their timing? If they were trying to draw positive attention to themselves, this was not a good idea. Chances are that the “Million America March Against Fear” will fizzle.
Let America remember the victims of Sept. 11, 2001 and plan your march for another day.