Farrakhan rally changes venue

The Associated Press A Nation of Islam march that city leaders feared could spark a riot in a racially tense neighborhood was canceled yesterday as officials announced plans for Minister Louis Farrakhan to speak at a citywide interfaith rally next week, instead. Local Nation of Islam leaders, complaining last month that police were slow to make arrests after a group of white men beat a black family, had scheduled a 5,000-man march through the city's Grays Ferry section for next Monday. Whites in Grays Ferry reacted angrily to those plans. At separate news conferences yesterday, top city officials and the head of the local Nation of Islam said Farrakhan, the group's charismatic national leader, agreed to address an anti-racism rally that men and women of all faiths and races would be welcome to attend. It is scheduled for Monday morning, the same time the march was to have been held. "This is a successful conclusion that averts a potential disastrous consequence for the city," said Mayor Ed Rendell, who wrote to Farrakhan on Friday proposing the idea of a rally at a large city arena as an alternative to the Grays Ferry march. The exact site had not been determined. Rendell, who is white and Jewish, and City Council President John Street, who is black, had been speaking to white and black residents of the economically distressed neighborhood and urging the Nation of Islam to reconsider its plans. Talks with local leaders produced the idea for Rendell to write to Farrakhan with an offer to speak, the mayor said. "We hammered home the point that there was great risk involved," said Rendell, who never spoke directly with Farrakhan. The decision to cancel the march in favor of the rally was Farrakhan's, said Minister Rodney Muhammad of Muhammad's Mosque of Islam No. 12 here. Farrakhan had sent his Chicago staff to assess the situation in Grays Ferry. "The Nation of Islam is a peaceful community," he said. Muhammad said the Nation of Islam would continue to protect the black family that was beaten in "a community plagued with racist thought," but that the circumstances called for a different course of action. "Grays Ferry is not isolated when it comes to racism," Muhammad said, sitting alongside Annette Williams, the black woman beaten with her teen-age son and nephew. "This is bigger than Rodney Muhammad. It's bigger than Grays Ferry. It's bigger than Philadelphia." Busloads of people from other cities will attend, he said. In his letter to Farrakhan, Rendell expressed confidence that a march could be disciplined and positive. He said, however, that he feared an incident started by a non-Muslim marcher, an onlooker or a troublemaking outsider could trigger a riot. Such a riot would have "disastrous consequences" for "the good people of Grays Ferry, who far, far outnumber the bad ones," and for the city, which is hosting the Presidents' Summit on National Service in two weeks, and for the Nation of Islam, which would be wrongly blamed, Rendell said. The city also committed to enhancing housing, recreation, police and other services in Grays Ferry, Street said. Grays Ferry West Community Action, a black group, scheduled a news conference for today to discuss its plans to proceed with a community march. Rendell and Street said the city would be prepared for that. Officials never were concerned over local marchers, but had been anxious about thousands of "outsiders" converging on the neighborhood, Street said. The Rev. Steven Avinger Sr. of the predominantly black Greater St. Matthew Baptist Church and co-chairman of a Grays Ferry Catholic-Protestant group formed in recent weeks, praised the cancellation.