Word: militia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...decade seem to have aggravated racial tensions rather than creating, as Jesse Jackson hoped, a "rainbow coalition" of poor and disaffected citizens of all colors. New York City has recently lurched from scholarly disputes about race to racial showdowns, a Milwaukee alderman has threatened to form a Black Panther militia if the city does not improve the conditions of blacks, and campuses across the country are so infected with intolerance that educators have organized mandatory "sensitivity training" sessions. In this climate it is hard to imagine that a sense of class solidarity would emerge for the insurgency that Phillips envisions...
...business boom that could produce thousands of new white-collar and service jobs, Milwaukee's civic leaders never gave much thought to the possibility of civil unrest. So it came as a shock when alderman Michael McGee proclaimed earlier this month that he was forming a Black Panther militia that would resort to "actual fighting, bloodshed and urban guerrilla warfare" unless the city did more to improve the lot of impoverished African Americans. Inner-city blacks, warned McGee, were fed up with white officials spending money on shopping malls and skyscrapers while prosperity passed them by. "It's been...
...nearly 500 young black men and women have enlisted in McGee's militia, 60 of them students from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He has become a hero to such youths because of his reputation for standing up to the white establishment. In the early 1970s he headed the Milwaukee chapter of the original Black Panthers. In 1984 he was elected to the city's Common Council, where he frequently resorts to theatrics to make a point. In 1988, for example, he wore a bag over his head in the council's annual group photograph. He and his followers...
...however, McGee has shifted from theatrics to threats. While the earlier Panthers stressed self-defense, he vows that unless his demands for $100 million in jobs programs and city council representation to give blacks more clout in city government are met by 1995, his militia will "cripple" the city and "extract a measure of justice." He even jokes about taking hostages if the city does not respond to his satisfaction...
...first, all McGee got for his efforts were calls for his resignation and threats to have him arrested. A group on the predominantly white South Side announced that it would form its own militia to protect the city from McGee's group. Other whites distributed racist literature in local factories. McGee's proposal to extend a street named for King into white areas seems doomed. He has also lost a fight in the council to transfer control of a jobs program from the county to the city. "We've got two worlds here," he said dejectedly after that defeat...