Everyone is grumbling about the government being shut down, but there’s at least one minor perk: The Klu Klux Klan’s planned and approved Gettysburg rally has been canceled.
The KKK sparked controversy last week when they announced their intention to organize publicly at Gettysburg National Military Park in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on October 5.
Park officials said that the group applied for a permit to “exercise its First Amendment rights” on that day, and that they had granted the group permission to do so, because free speech is free speech even for groups no one really agrees with .
Anyway, the event was in the bag for the KKK until the House of Representatives and the Senate brought a nasty, years-long fight to an ignoble close on September 30.
As the clock struck midnight and October 1 came, along with the launch of the Affordable Care Act’s healthcare exchange marketplace, the federal government shut down for the first time in 17 years, having run out of money to keep its expensive operations chugging.
How does this affect the Klu Klux Klan’s planned rally? Because all non-essential government services have been shut down, and that means parks .
The permit had been approved for the Maryland-based group, but was rescinded by park officials prior to the shutdown. Permits for at least 11 other events have been rescinded, as well.
Even if the fed figures out how to keep the lights on for another few months, the KKK’s planned rally still probably won’t happen.
“It’s too early to say. We’ll have to answer that question when the shutdown ends,” said Katie Lawhon, management assistant at Gettysburg National Military Park.
The Klan had said that the demonstration was part of a wider effort to re-brand the group not as a hate cult, but rather a separatist movement.
“We are white separatists. We believe the races should not mix. A black man who works 40 hours a week to provide for his family and raises his family the right way, we don’t have a problem with him. We do have a problem with the man who wants to sell drugs in one corner and his wife on the other. We have a problem with that,” said Richard Preston, the head of the Confederate White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Shucks, it’s too bad we’ll miss that.