Posted: Jul 17, 2015 7:30 PM EDT
Updated: Jul 18, 2015 12:34 PM EDT
By Samantha Bleiweis

... A prayer rally hosted by three local churches, Trenholm Road United Methodist Church, Crossroads World Outreach Center, and Riverside Community Church, was planned for Saturday. After seeing Haley's statement, organizers moved it to Sunday at 3 p.m.

Pastor Mike Smith of Trenholm Road United Methodist Church said it's a chance for these churches who have never come together like this before to work together to build unity.

"The church is unified in its mission, and part of that mission includes humility, it includes love, it includes service, and it includes speaking out against evil and injustice in whatever forms they present themselves," Smith said.

Smith said the vigil will be attended by members of his congregation and the two others. He also said many others from across the Midlands all areas of the state will come to pray. He said he sees this as an opportunity for churches and individuals to come together and work for the greater good of South Carolina.

http://www.wbtv.com/story/29576302/pastors-honor-governors-request-to-stay-away-from-state-house-during-kkk-rally

and for every sane person to ignore them. It's pretty hard to complain about people trying to shut you up when you are the only ones around.

This is all for the best: the KKK--the oldest and most infamous hate group in the country--throws a rally in support of a flag they say is about heritage, not hate....riiiiiiight. They had to be smoking something when they came up with this bright idea.

Thanks for the thread, struggle4progress.

By Janell Ross
July 18 at 8:00 AM

... Within days of the church shooting in Charleston, the group appears to have blanketed neighborhoods in communities as far flung as Orange County, Calif. and at least one in North Charleston, a nearby incorporated city with its own recent race-related challenges. The flyers included language "assuring" residents of the Klan's presence and protection ...

The KKK has always flared or flexed its muscle at points of challenge -- real or imagined -- to a social order that puts white Americans first. Conversely, its public presence and influence has waned at moments when this dominance was most secure. And it's in that context -- rather than America's now almost reflexive suspicion about publicity seeking and empty symbolism -- that both Saturday's KKK rally and the flag removal that set it in motion should really be understood ...

In December 1865, just eight months after the Confederate Army's surrender, a group of six men gathered in Pulaski, Tennessee. Disillusioned by the loss of the war and what they saw as freed slaves living and behaving above their station, these former Confederate soldiers were also angry ...

Union army occupation in most of the South was only part of what bothered these men. There were also ongoing federal efforts to help freed slaves establish their economic lives and reunite the members of just-freed slave families once sold off and separated like spare part ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/07/18/the-kkk-is-rallying-this-weekend-in-south-carolina-heres-why/

A greatly weakened Ku Klux Klan will try to tap into fears about loss of white heritage and power as it holds a pro-Confederate flag rally at the South Carolina state house Saturday.
By Patrik Jonsson
JULY 18, 2015

... As of Saturday, 39,000 people had signed a change.org petition to remove the African-American monument from the state grounds in South Carolina, because it “depicts slave ships, mistreatment and words such as ‘segregation’ and ‘Jim Crow’ … that can and [do] serve to invoke in the white community feelings of shame, humiliation and offense, serving as a constant reminder of the dark history of slavery” ...

... a broader push across America and the South to rethink Confederate symbols .. has forced many Americans to rethink their views on the cause of the Civil War – whether it was fought over states' rights or slavery ...

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2015/0718/KKK-Confederate-flag-rally-tests-power-of-invisible-empire

What the KKK really only widely spreads is verbal manure on fields of hate, paranoia and stupidity, only confirming the influence of cults on weak minds.

Domestic terrorists come in all kinds of colors and outerwear and names.

July 18, 2015

Columbia Police Chief Skip Holbrook says the KKK protest is his “biggest concern” especially since the Sons of Confederate Veterans and a black separatist group will be located at the State House grounds at the same time ... The Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley has asked residents to stay away from the city centre and the Klu Klux Klan rally which she described as “hateful, disruptive spectacle” ... Meanwhile, a Florida based African-American activist group called the Black Educators for Justice is expecting roughly 300 people at its protest from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday. He said his group is co-sponsoring Saturday’s event along with Black Lawyers for Justice and Black Agenda United ...

http://www.ifreepress.com/businessfinance/5063-nc-kkk-group-to-protest-at-south-carolina-statehouse

BY JAMIE SELF

... By 1:30 p.m., the crowd had swelled to about 400 people ... A Ku Klux Klan group from North Carolina and a Nazi group out of Detroit are scheduled to protest later Saturday, at 3 p.m., against the removal of the flag. Early on, several men carrying large Confederate flags walked through the crowd, attracting demonstrators around them. A few heated verbal confrontations followed, but police quickly separated the sides, and the men with the flags left ... Each of the main groups involved has been deemed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article27628330.html

by ELISHA FIELDSTADT

... The Loyal White Knights of the Klu Klux Klan, based in North Carolina, applied for a permit to rally outside the Capitol and is expected to assemble in a group of at least 100 from between 3 to 5 PM. In response, members of Black Lawyers for Justice and Black Educators for Justice, a Florida organization with links to the New Black Panther Party, assembled on the north side of the Capitol around noon to hold a "Countering the Attack on Black Unity Rally" according to a flyer. The rally was scheduled to run until 3 PM, when Klan members were expected to descend on the same area ...

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/confederate-flag-furor/south-carolinians-urged-ignore-ugly-opposing-confederate-flag-rallies-capitol-n394401

it probably wouldn't last long.
But Fox et al.must sell diet pills.

By Jeremy Borden July 18 at 5:02 PM

... Roy Pemberton, 62, a Klansman who prominently wore the group’s so-called “blood drop” cross on his hat, trolled the suburban parking lots of Wal-Marts, Home Depots and Krogers looking for fresh recruits. But he also had a more immediate concern: a call for sympathizers to join Saturday’s rally protesting South Carolina’s recent removal of the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds and its banishment to a museum ... Pemberton barked at one man who wanted nothing to do with him: “They take our flag, soon they’ll take your wife” ... The New Black Panther Party showed up earlier in the day to protest ... When Klansmen arrived later, the groups clashed intermittently. A man wearing a Confederate flag vest was slugged in the head, and a skirmish erupted. Police could be seen breaking up other fights, detaining people and hauling them away. One group seized a Confederate flag and sought to set it on fire before police intervened. The Klan rally, which ended around 4 p.m., featured no speakers but chants of “White power!” from the approximately 100 who attended ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/kkk-protests-after-swift-reckoning-for-confederate-flag-in-the-south/2015/07/18/a2407fae-2d85-11e5-a5ea-cf74396e59ec_story.html

by ELISHA FIELDSTADT and CRAIG STANLEY

... About 50 members descended on the Capitol steps waving the rebel banners — at least one of which included a Nazi symbol — and immediately began shouting racial slurs at attendees of an earlier "Countering the Attack on Black Unity Rally." Those protesters were moved behind barricades, a distance away from the Statehouse steps, where they yelled back at the pro-Confederate flag group.

Within about an hour, everyone was ushered away from the Capitol by dozens of law enforcement officers, many outfitted in bullet-proof vests, helmets and camouflage. At least one physical scuffle broke out, and some people who got a hold of a Confederate flag tore it into several pieces.

About 2,000 people were at the Statehouse at the peak of the two rallies, according to the South Carolina Department of Public Safety. The department said five people had been arrested after the KKK members showed up for offenses including disorderly conduct, simple assault and breach of peace. Additional officers were on scene at that time.

No officers were injured, but there were 23 calls for emergency services and seven people were transported by medical personnel, according to the Department of Public Safety. The temperatures rose to the high nineties in Columbia Saturday afternoon ...

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/confederate-flag-furor/south-carolinians-urged-ignore-ugly-opposing-confederate-flag-rallies-capitol-n394401

BY NICOLE HENSLEY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Saturday, July 18, 2015, 4:57 PM
Updated: Saturday, July 18, 2015, 7:27 PM

... small brawls took place near the site of where state officials took down a Confederate flag ... Two people were arrested on simple assault charges, another two on breach of peace charges, while a fifth person was taken into custody for disorderly conduct. The chapter’s demonstration ended earlier than organizers intended by recommendation of the South Carolina Department of Public troopers who then escorted their protesters off Statehouse property, Lt. Kelley Hughes said in a statement. “In the interest of public safety, law enforcement made the decision to end the rally about an hour early,” Hughes wrote ...

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/kkk-neo-nazis-met-protesters-s-captiol-article-1.2296624